It was a dark night on the bus to Barcelona.  Not merely the sky, but my inner landscape too was bleak.  Tears dripped onto my shirt.

Our flight from Groningen had landed at 9:30 p.m.–an hour after the girls’ latest bedtime.  The bus to the Groningen airport had been long, as was the wait in the terminal, and the flight itself.  It had been a long day of not much.

Caroline had curled up on my lap and slept throughout the flight.  I had to wake her to get her off of the plane, and she wept as I carried her down the aisle.  We descended the plane and walked through the terminal.

“How far away is the hotel?” I asked Steve.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What?”  I replied, feeling angry as I held our crying child that he hadn’t done more research to know what the plan was.

He went to ask a professional.

When he returned, he gently informed me, “We have to take a bus downtown and then a taxi to the hotel.  The bus ride will take an hour and costs 16 euros per person, or we can take a taxi straight to the hotel.”

I stared at him.  I wanted Caroline to go back to sleep–both girls to go to sleep.  It was all I wanted, and I had little energy for the actual debate between bad choices as we walked up to the ticket booth for the bus.  The woman at the bus kiosk heard me waver and jumped in, “You want to take the bus.  Much less expensive.  Here, buy tickets.”

I felt rushed and pressured.  The bus was loading, and I didn’t want to miss it.  When would the next one even be available?

I just wanted to get into a quiet car and have it smoothly drive us to our beds.   I just wanted it to be easier, to get into one vehicle so that the girls could lie down and go to sleep. Instead, we purchased tickets.

We stowed our luggage in the compartments under the bus and climbed on.  It was blessedly dark and cool.  And crowded.  Every seat on the bus was taken.  I saw single seats free.  The driver pulled away from the curb, so I told Margaret to sit down with a stranger.  In the dark.  On a bus in Spain.  Well after her bedtime.  I dragged my feet away from Margaret down the narrow aisle, holding Caroline’s hand, looking for more empty seats. I told her to sit down; seeing two seats one behind the other, so at least I was close.  She was scared and tired.  Steve saw one open by the window a few rows back and sat down. “Let me know how I can help,” he said.  “I can hold Caroline if you want.”

The woman sitting next to me offered to switch places so that I could sit with the girls.  I walked forward to ask Margaret if she wanted to come backwards.

“YES!” she replied with wide, scared eyes.  By the time I got back to my row, the woman had switched seats, so now there were two together, for three of us.  I sat down with Caroline on my lap and Margaret by my side.  It was infinitely better.  Still, the tears rolled down my cheeks.  I was on a bus that would last an hour, after dark, in Spain, with my kids up way past their bedtimes.

Tears of what?  Anger?  Frustration?  Guilt?  This wasn’t my plan and I wasn’t having a good time.

“This was a mistake,” was all I could think.  Coming to Spain for two nights was a mistake.  Getting on the bus was a mistake.

Caroline was restless.  I wanted her to go to sleep, so I took her back the few rows to Steve.  She went to him without complaint, and sure enough, settled in to sleep.

Margaret and I sat, holding hands, and I fished for music on two sets of headphones.  That meant that she wouldn’t sleep, but we were together.  I tried to exhale, and being alone with her, I could.

“Moving your family overseas for a year?  You’re crazy,” Amy Holmes said to me this morning when I visited her writing camp.

Is it crazy?  Is it a mistake, like our late night bus to Barcelona felt at the time?  I have to be able to explain why a certain choice is the right one for me, even if this explanation is only to silence my own inner critic.  When I look inward for my major justification, it is this: I want to remember.

Six years ago, I flew with Steve, my in-laws, and 23 month-old Margaret to Taipei, then to Palau and back to Taiwan.  I can remember the clothes Margaret wore, the shape of her body in my lap on the plane, the way she conversed, the pull of the sling when I carried her on my hip, her irrationally confident steps around the swimming pool, the splash of her submersion, the weight of thirty pounds in my arms as she squealed with delight and asked to go under again.  Margaret turned two on that trip.  I remember that she wanted to go to sleep before we cut into her birthday cake, sitting at a long table in my sister’s carport on a Pacific island, chickens clucking around our feet.  I remember it better than the other 49 weeks of that year.

Travel does that.  The tastes of Taiwan are indelible, and sealed up with them in the package of that vacation is a portrait of Margaret during that three week window.  Travel also pulls us together. On that trip, Margaret was giddy with joy at sharing a room and every day with both parents and two grandparents for three weeks.   Why an overseas sabbatical?  Because when we hold hands on the bus, I will remember the shapes of their fingers.