Becoming

Childhood's End

Dave made his way from the gates towards the baggage carousel his bags were supposed to be unloaded on. A couple of days with Ade following the disaster of Bruce's final tour with Maiden had done much to lift his spirits. He waved as he spotted Tamar, carrying Tasha, entering the doors near the carousels.

"Welcome home," Tamar called, smiling and encouraging little Tasha, now a bit over two years old, to run to her father in the baggage claim of Honolulu's airport. "How was the trip? Did you and Ade have a good visit?"

Dave smiled back, hurrying over to greet his wife and daughter. He scooped up the giggling Tasha, kissing her cheeks and then balancing her on his hip so he could give Tamar a one-armed hug and a quick kiss as well. "It's good to be home, for however long that might last," he said. "The trip was the usual, nothing especially good or bad about it, and yes, Ade and I had a good visit. How have things been here?"

"Pretty well," Tamar said. "Dad wants to go over our investment strategy with us at some point this week, both for us personally, and for the rest of the band. He's thinking you all might want to adjust to a lower risk strategy, at least until you know for sure if Maiden's gonna stay together, what with Bruce leaving and all."

"Yeah, I understand," Dave agreed, passing Tasha back to Tamar so he could grab his bags as they came around on the carousel. "Harry's determined to keep it going, though. Mind, I think as much to spite Bruce as anything else, prove we can make it without him and all that rot, but if that's what's gonna motivate him, who am I to argue the point?"

"Understandable," Tamar agreed. "So what happens now?"

"Harry said for us all to take a month or so to relax, then he'll ring us up with whatever the new plans might be," Dave said. "So, I'll work on my golf game, play with Tasha, have that meeting with your da, and maybe I'll even finally let you coax me out on a surfboard so you can have a laugh watching me repeatedly fall in the water." He grinned as he grabbed his suitcases and piled them on a trolley. "That's everything."

"Let's go, then," Tamar said. "If Tasha cooperates in getting settled in her car seat, we might even make it out of the parking garage here before we have to pay for another hour."

"How about I mind her here, whilst you get the car?" Dave suggested. "You'll move faster alone to go fetch the car from the garage, plus then I'll be able to help you get her settled if she's being a fusspot once I've loaded my gear in the boot. I've all my bags now, so I can keep my full attention on her, and we can wait out in the loading zone for you to pull up."

"Okay, that makes sense," Tamar agreed, and passed Tasha back over to him.

They made their way out of the baggage claim area and Tamar hurried across the roadway to the parking garage as Dave steered the trolley with his bags to a bench and sat down with his daughter on his lap. "Well, Princess, Daddy's home again, what do you think of that?" he asked her.

"Good, Daddy," Tasha said. "Play? Park?"

Dave laughed as he bounced her on his knee. "Well, I'm sure we can go to the park to play sometime soon, Princess Tasha," he told her. "We just have to check with Mummy to see if we'll have time today. I'm all mixed up about times again, plus I don't know if we're staying here for the night or if we've time enough to make the ferry back to Maui."

Tamar pulled up with her car just then and popped the lid of the boot, then got out to take Tasha from Dave and get her into her car seat. Meanwhile Dave went through the usual rigamarole of fitting his luggage into the boot; with petrol costing nearly twice as much in Hawaii as the US mainland, pretty much everyone drove small cars with good fuel economy, but of course a small car didn't have much in the way of cargo space. When they'd made their trip to Canada as a family that time, they'd had to pile half their bags in the back seat of the car around Tasha's car seat in order to fit it all in. And when the Smiths had visited them, they'd had to use both their cars plus ask Tamar's mother to also come along with her own car to collect them at the airport, to make sure there was enough room for all five Smiths plus their luggage.