Tiptoeing through covid, heading straight into the trucker convoy and the possibility of nuclear war (because D.C. will always be a target and I will always worry), we finally drove south to visit much-missed family. A tour of aging kin and the oldest child. The young people are too busy to come to us, the old are too old. So we go, in spite of our homebody ways.
Things I noticed:
My very bad back hates the car.
The skin on the inside of my elbows is suddenly alarming.
Road food is still gross and roadsides are choked with garbage.
Trump barns, junkyards, strip clubs, and landfills. Welcome to Pennsylvania.
The pandemic requires constant risk assessment and negotiation. No, I will not eat in a crowded restaurant. No, I will not gather with crazy anti-vax relatives. Yes, everyone will be mildly annoyed with me, even though I’ve driven many hours with a bad back to bring them wine and cookies.
Spring is there, blooming seductively all over the place. Cherry, forsythia, tulips, daffodils, lenten rose. Only snowdrops at home, and they’re cowering in the cold still.
The light is different. The scents and sounds. Good to give the senses some exercise.
My son’s sweet dog has a healing scar the length of his belly, I could hardly look at it. He ate a tennis ball and required surgery. No more balls.
The son and DIL are full of life, with much more energy and ambition than I had at their age. Or maybe I just don’t remember. Or maybe it’s because they’re childless and I had my 4th kid at 33. Deliberate I was not. A friend once told me, “Things just seem to happen to you.” Yeah, lots of things.
Long walks through charming city neighborhoods are liberating after a few lockdown years in rural isolation. I won’t go into the crowded, maskless bar, so a delicious cocktail on a chilly, empty patio is good enough. Reason wins.
My mother gathers things and shares with everyone. This time a giant estate was being liquidated and, because she knows someone who knows someone, she took whatever she wanted. We got a bag of clothes, two rugs, books, and a lamp. She also grabbed a 2003 Pouilly-Fuissé for me, but is old white wine good? Guess we’ll find out.
She tends a dying cat and we watch a mangy fox weave through the backyard. Chicken soup and the Oscar slap, a walk in the wind dodging goose shit and flying sticks.
My father resists all technology, but was thrilled when we made YouTube happen on his television. He watched Albert Collins in Japan and old, live footage of Eric Dolphy. I could barely speak to him for a few hours, he was “in the zone.” Crows sit on his balcony and stare at him through the glass, waiting for the peanuts that he throws to the squirrels. He talks to the animals, and himself. He’s drowning in books and I brought him more. Our love language.
Dad’s doctor calls to schedule his second booster. “Covid is everywhere.” Great.
My aunt (who is my age and more like a sister) has a brand new glass eye (I don’t think it’s actually glass) and it’s astonishing what people endure. The new eye looks like her other one and moves around in the same way. They attach it to muscles I think? (And now I’m getting dizzy and shouldn’t think about it anymore.) I met her new grandbaby and sort of remembered babies. It’s been a long time.
92-year-old great Aunt Bea in bright jewels and purple velvet. She has 365 decorative spoons. “You’ll have to come back for the spoon cleaning party.” She told us how, as a child, she “beat the shit” out of a boy who was teasing her younger sister. She has many bouquets but, with a wave of her hand, says, “I don’t know who brought the flowers, there’s so many.” She shuffles like a tiny, frail Tim Conway, but takes a daily walk and chastises the rest of us. “Have you taken your walk today?” She FaceTimes her granddaughter in Israel and shares photos on her giant phone. She can’t drive anymore and looks wistfully at the car in the carport. I hope they took her keys. I hope I got her genes.
Too much wine. Too much takeout. Never enough time.
The drive home is quiet. He drives, because he loves to and I don’t. I can’t parse my sadness, it’s like a sadness in a language I don’t speak. I’m so tired and my body complains. The old people are fading and we don’t care for our old people here, in America. The young people are trying but it’s hard, in plague-and-war-riddled times. The world energized me when I was young, now it feels exhausting. And sad.
At home, I miss my people. After a good sleep in a good bed, the back is better and the new day seems less sad, somehow. Spring will show up soon, I’ll go south again. They have given me hope, the young with their baby dreams, the old with their gifts, the older with spoons and purple velvet. We are, each of us, making it work, somehow. It’s good to be home.
Notes from a Road Trip
Reading this made me miss my family just a bit more. Thank you for sharing.