“It’s just… usually you’re so…” she trails off.
I know how I am. But not with flying. At least, not with my kid in the back seat. And now with this woman as a passenger? No way. I shake my head. “Not with you and Immy in the plane. Besides, this old gal’s not built for barrel-rolls. She’s more of a point A to point B aircraft. Like if your car was a plane, this would be it.”
Sunny smiles, patting the dash of the plane like a dog. “I like her.”
I like her, too.
My dad picks us up from Crystal Airport in the same Subaru he’s been driving since I bought it for him. It was a gift after I got my first big paycheck—a “thank you for not killing me as a teenager” offering. He loves the thing.
When he pulls up to the curb, I offer Sunny the front seat because it seems like the gentlemanly thing to do, but her panicked head shaking tells me she’ll be more comfortable in the back seat with Immy. She waits with me, shivering in her little blue dress and tennis shoes, while my dad walks around the car to greet us. Minneapolis is chilly compared to the warm, dry desert we just left. I tug a sweatshirt out of my carry-on and pass it to her. She thanks me and pulls it over her head, wrapping the long sleeves over her knuckles and folding her arms around herself. Her glasses are askew from the process, and she pushes them back into place.
The sight of her swimming in my oversized sweatshirt, her brown eyes blinking behind her glasses, makes the words tumble out of my mouth. “You… you get used to it. True Minnesotans consider this spring.”
My dad pops the trunk to help me load our bags, then gives me a quick hug with a pat on the back and a short, “Glad you’re home, Son.” He nods at Sunny. But when Imogen wraps her arms around his legs he comes alive. He scoops her up and squeezes her in a bear hug.
“Morfie!” Immy’s squeal is muffled by the shoulder of her grandpa’s worn, navy corduroy jacket.
Sunny looks at me with a question in her eyes.
While my daughter and her grandpa catch up I explain, “Grandpa isMorfarin Swedish. Immy turned it into Morfie. She morphed it, if you will.” I cringe at my lame joke.
Sunny’s eyes are warm. “You are such a gigantic dork. I love it.”
I smile into the trunk where Sunny can’t see, arranging the last of the bags and slamming it closed. “Grandma isMormor. She calls her Mormie. You can call her Tillie, and my dad is Johan.” I hope mytone conveys that she shouldn’t be nervous. “I’m surprised my mom didn’t come along. I know she wants to meet you.”
“It’s a shame. I have so many questions about all of this.” She waves a hand in my general direction.
“Well, too bad. You’ll have to believe the lies you read on TMZ like everyone else.”
I open Sunny’s door and hold it until she settles in her seat. My dad buckles Immy into the booster seat that never leaves the back of the car. After I’m buckled in I tug my hat over my head. My aviator sunglasses have been in place since the flight because obviously I can’t aviate without them.Oh, geez.Are dad jokes contagious? Because I’ve been with my father for under five minutes and they’re popping up like an allergic rash.
“Did Mom give you the address of the place where Sunny’s staying?”
“Yeah, I got it.” He turns to Sunny in the back seat. “You sure you don’t want to come to dinner first? My wife would love to meet you. She made me promise to invite you and offer a ride to your hotel after.” It’s clear that my dad is uncomfortable. He never knows how to act around the people in my life, so he ends up acting overly formal bordering on standoffish. He doesn’t know Sunny, though.
“I’d really like that. I have a lot of questions about this guy.” She pats my shoulder over the seat. “I haven’t been able to nail down a diagnosis.”
That gets a loud laugh from my dad. “Oh, Tillie needs to meet you. She can tell you everything you need to know, plus some things you don’t want to know.” He pulls into traffic. “So, what do you say? Dinner?”
“Yeah, Sunny! You have to meet my Mormie.” Imogen chimes in.
“I’d love to. Thank you.”
And that’s how, a few hours later, I find myself wedged between my mother and Sunny on our family couch, flipping through a photo album while the two women laugh at me. Sunny gets a kick out of thematching footed Christmas pajamas my mother sewed for us every year until way too recently.
“Please tell me these still exist,” she says, breathless with laughter.
She turns the page, and it’s a picture of the whole family after my parents’ citizenship ceremony. I was probably five or six years old that day. I don’t remember much about Sweden, since I was only a few years old when my parents emigrated, first to New York, then eventually finding jobs as school teachers in Minneapolis. They’ve been here ever since.
“What brought you to the United States?”
My mother looks at my dad in the kitchen. He’s up to his elbows in dishwater. Immy is standing on a chair beside him, drying plates and putting them away. “Äventyrskall,” she answers in her native tongue with a dreamy sigh. “The call of adventure. Johan and I love to travel. We wanted to see the world. We fell in love with this country. Something called us here, so here we are.”
She flips the page to a photo from one of our many trips to the motherland. My brothers and I lined up in slickers and galoshes on some rain-soaked street in Stockholm. “We didn’t make it home often enough. But we do now, thanks to this guy.” My mom kisses my cheek. That makes forty-seven for this visit. I’m keeping a tally.
“Aw, what a good son,” Sunny squeezes my knee. She hides a yawn behind her hand.
They’ve been mocking old photos of me for so long, I didn’t realize how late it has gotten. “We should probably get you to your hotel, huh?”
