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Day started out terrifyingly. I hit the snooze button on my phone at 8:00, then heard the car door slam as my mom left. What? The plane wasn’t leaving till 11:55; where was she going? I slept some more, figuring she’d come back and tell me. 8:30, I woke up and took a shower, ate a cheesy egg and some vitamins, stuffed my computer into my backpack with half a week’s worth of clothes. I meandered about the house, called mama’s cell phone a couple times before I realized it was in the living room, and started to worry. Around 10:00, Grandjo and David showed up to take care of the house and dogs. They didn’t know where mama was, either. She arrived about two minutes later, ranting about the crazy tickets that weren’t open yesterday because of the thunderstorm, and the bank that wouldn’t give her more than $500 when she needed $700 for the tickets, and the silly ATMs that would only do $50 at a time, and everything took forever. So we were in a ridiculous hurry by the time we left, David in the car to take it back when we got out.
We hit all the red lights, turned down all the streets that didn’t go through, and got stuck behind the train. Once, waiting at a red light, mama changed lanes without backing up after having gotten slightly too close, and touched the bumper of the ostentatious SUV in front. It honked nastily. We stopped at the place we would have stopped anyway, about 30 feet away in the shorter line of cars in our lane, and the crazy woman in the SUV ran up, furiously motioned mama to roll down her window, and proceeded to yell and curse at her, accuse her of hitting-and-running, and generally be completely and unreasonably ridiculous. “I have your license plate number! I’LL REPORT YOUR ASS!” “You do that,” said mama, and rolled the window back up. I tried not to be upset, but then David and mama were talking about poor Andy’s situation (looks like he’ll lose all visitation at the next hearing), and David was wondering why we were going to PA anyway, and mama got defensive about it being my family, and I was fairly miserable.
But we got to the airport soon enough to wait a long time for the plane. I calmed down. Mama got me a salad from McDonald’s (awful, but better than nothing… barely). I read a couple books, we boarded, and lifted off. Takeoff has never failed to induce my sense of wonder, and only once has it failed to put me in a good mood (coming home from Cambridge I cried the whole way, including the wait in the connection at O’Hare). But this time it was lovely, and the one after the connection in Chicago caught sunset above the clouds in a gorgeous way. It certainly made an impression on the family of first-time-flyers in the seats ahead of us: “It’s SO beautiful! Maybe Jesus and God and Mary are up there!”
In any case, we got to Pittsburgh on time, car rental was amazingly free of rigamarole and delay, and though there was ice and snow on the roads, the traffic wasn’t bad and we made terrific time to April’s house, where I am currently sitting on the couch. My grandmother, my dad’s sister, her husband and daughter, and my dad’s brother (whom I’ve never met at an age that I can remember) are here, and very cordial and easy to talk to. They’re cool people, (aside from the whole New Englander thing), of whom I see not nearly enough. I’m glad I came.
However, I wonder what I’m going to do about eating?
We hit all the red lights, turned down all the streets that didn’t go through, and got stuck behind the train. Once, waiting at a red light, mama changed lanes without backing up after having gotten slightly too close, and touched the bumper of the ostentatious SUV in front. It honked nastily. We stopped at the place we would have stopped anyway, about 30 feet away in the shorter line of cars in our lane, and the crazy woman in the SUV ran up, furiously motioned mama to roll down her window, and proceeded to yell and curse at her, accuse her of hitting-and-running, and generally be completely and unreasonably ridiculous. “I have your license plate number! I’LL REPORT YOUR ASS!” “You do that,” said mama, and rolled the window back up. I tried not to be upset, but then David and mama were talking about poor Andy’s situation (looks like he’ll lose all visitation at the next hearing), and David was wondering why we were going to PA anyway, and mama got defensive about it being my family, and I was fairly miserable.
But we got to the airport soon enough to wait a long time for the plane. I calmed down. Mama got me a salad from McDonald’s (awful, but better than nothing… barely). I read a couple books, we boarded, and lifted off. Takeoff has never failed to induce my sense of wonder, and only once has it failed to put me in a good mood (coming home from Cambridge I cried the whole way, including the wait in the connection at O’Hare). But this time it was lovely, and the one after the connection in Chicago caught sunset above the clouds in a gorgeous way. It certainly made an impression on the family of first-time-flyers in the seats ahead of us: “It’s SO beautiful! Maybe Jesus and God and Mary are up there!”
In any case, we got to Pittsburgh on time, car rental was amazingly free of rigamarole and delay, and though there was ice and snow on the roads, the traffic wasn’t bad and we made terrific time to April’s house, where I am currently sitting on the couch. My grandmother, my dad’s sister, her husband and daughter, and my dad’s brother (whom I’ve never met at an age that I can remember) are here, and very cordial and easy to talk to. They’re cool people, (aside from the whole New Englander thing), of whom I see not nearly enough. I’m glad I came.
However, I wonder what I’m going to do about eating?