Casey and Karis

Casey and I should be sitting at a gate at JFK waiting for the announcement of our Air France flight. We should be imagining strolls down the streets of Paris anticipating dinner, good wine, and baguettes. We should be picturing ourselves in the sunshine in Nice, beaming as our Karis marries Dmitry. We should be visualizing the reception and dancing barefoot, pausing only to hug Karis and eat cake.

 

Hotel reservations and flights were nailed down a month ago. We updated our passports, applied for TSA Pre-Check, and indulged in a T.J. Maxx shopping extravaganza – the first, we realized, since the search for Casey’s wedding dress. Like any good mama bear, Casey has worried about leaving three-year-old Eleanor, but this would be a special time for the two of us, and Karis is a special friend.

The girls met in New York in 2007. Karis was training to become a Pilates instructor and needed a body on which to practice. Casey filled in as the body. They became close friends and roommates, and in 2011, to the horror of both girls’ parents, they decided to head to South-East Asia for a 4-month back-packing adventure. 

 

Their destinations were terrifying for those who came of age during the sixties: Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos among them. For us, these names conjured napalm clouds, perilous jungles, guerrilla warfare, and exotic diseases. For Karis and Casey, only one of those words, exotic, applied.

 

Casey was 28, so it was not up to us, but what a leap of fearful faith it was to let our daughter go! Plus, things were a little shaky right from the start: while heading out the door to meet Karis and her father at JFK, I said, “Case, are you sure that’s the right airport?”

 

“Really, Mom? Well, yes. But now you’ve made me nervous.” She called Karis who was already in the car, on her way… to Newark. 

 

Throughout the four months of their trip, Casey posted pictures and a blog. She and Karis were the heroines of the story, and Dave and I couldn’t wait to read every installment. Hiking the Great Wall of China. Cruising the Mekong River with a sketchy crew. Sampling crickets in markets. Wading through rivers on elephants. There were alarming tales, too, which, thank heavens, we learned long after they happened: an inebriated night ride tubing down a river, a terrible case of food poisoning, and two robberies.

It was agony to think they were half a world away, so, with their permission, Dave and I joined them in Thailand. As we rode elephants, caressed tigers, bathed in waterfalls, and hiked jungle paths with them, we, too, came to love adorable Karis. And now, 11 years later, Casey and I were going to France to revel in the happiness of her wedding. 

But the telephone rang at 7:30 this morning. Casey and Eleanor both tested positive for Covid, and PJ, Casey’s husband, didn’t feel well either. We couldn’t go. It was out of our hands.

 

As the day wore on, more signs emerged. Little Eleanor told PJ she’d dreamed of “a big airplane filled with water,” and spiked a fever of 103.9. Casey sent a picture of her sick little one asleep on the couch with the message, "This is the reason we're not going." My sister-in-law called and mentioned a minor collision the week before between two planes at JFK: one Alitalia, the other, Air France.  “I wasn’t going to tell you,” she said, “but now…” 

As painful as this was, it was not meant to be, and we’ve tried to focus on the nightmare involved had we been in flight or in France when Casey and Eleanor became sick. Covid has taught us to make plans, but have no expectations, so we’ve been resigned, even grateful, that Covid cropped up before we took off. 

 

But our beloved Karis is getting married, and we won’t be there with her.