Life is Full of Ups and Downs: or Are You an Optimista or Pessimista?

Our trips have been plentiful this summer; we're all grateful for that. Now, with a bit of quiet time, I am settling after being away for a bit, going through pictures, and reflecting on the trip.

As we began this most recent trip, this time by plane, we wandered into a cute little airport eatery. It was not your typical airport eatery filled with overpriced, bad food, but instead was decently priced with lots of good healthy choices. As we were paying for the food, I noticed a set of unique looking wine glasses and took a peek. There was a line drawn in the middle of the glass. Written just above the line was the word “optimsta”. Just below: “pessimista”. Smiling, I put the glass down and thought to myself, I’m definitely an optimista. And on we went with our journey.



















Two planes, four days filled with love, laughter, and adventure, and we found ourselves at the airport once again, this time on our way home. It had been a perfect trip in every way. He said his ride on the carousel was a highlight and we laughed about the carousel being a metaphor for life (he loves to talk about metaphors).




















And now at the airport, here’s how the events unfolded:

We missed the terminal, and had to circle the airport a second time.
Zeal got extra time with Grammy and Aunt Julie.

Checking in, we find that we are booked on three separate airlines, and we have to check-in at three separate check-in counters.
Zeal proudly showed off his new lego creation to more and more people.

Finally at the check-in counter for our originating flight, we are told we can no longer check luggage and we have to pay for any pieces of luggage we do want to check, but we can carry-on anything within the proper size dimensions (uh, hello, we checked it on the way down without a charge!) We decide to carry our luggage on, all four pieces of it (two backpacks and two suitcases).
Our luggage is all the right size to carry-on.

My toiletries, some of them rather expensive, are seized at the security check point because they are in 4 ounce bottles instead of 3 ounces (did I mention that I didn’t check them because of the charge? Ugh!)
They were half-used so replacing them costs only half as much.

Each of the three times we changed planes, our “new” plane is in an entirely different terminal in the airport.
We got lots of exercise coming back.

The whole encounter reminds me of a few great books worth exploring, both with the theme of optimista/pessimista.

That’s Good, That’s Bad by Margery Cuyler



and Fortunately by Remy Charlip








Now, I admit, those little bits in italic were not my first thoughts. In fact, they're Zeal’s thoughts, all the things he said to me as I was recounting the story. Each time, I agreed with him, albeit a bit reluctantly. And now here I am thinking, I want to be a half-full mama for him; I want to be the optimista I thought I was. At least I know my son is. I’ll take my cues from him today – these little ones are always the best teachers.