Maybe Next Month
Wed., February 19, 04:59 PM
As many of you know, we – Husband, Son, and I – were supposed to fly to Florida yesterday. As more of you know, the Blizzard of ’03 changed a lot of plans. I won’t say “fiasco,” but a lot of waste went into this operation.
Son had planned long ago to spend the weekend in Vermont. So, on Monday he drove back to Boston from Vermont (to take his friend home), and then he started down toward Connecticut. He has complete trust in his vehicle, but it was not a fun ride. By the time he got to Connecticut, I had already found out that our Tuesday flight had been canceled. He would check further with the airline in the morning.
Tuesday morning I was up at five, doing my usual routine. Snow seems to be finished. Pot of coffee. Breakfast. I have to take meds, so I have to eat. Awaken U.D. so she can go to work. No sense in waking Husband till we get a handle on when (if) we’re going. I waited till seven to call Son, since he’d gotten in after eleven. “I’ll call the airline and let you know.”
Decided to get Husband and give him morning meds. (I’d have done them later if we were leaving early.) Don’t know whether he realized what day it was; he went back to bed.
From the television news I knew that the airport was open but there weren’t many planes available (all having been grounded elsewhere before the storm). Son was on the phone for half an hour before someone told him that there were “no available flights today, no available flights tomorrow.” That’s it, he has no more time off right now; we’re not leaving on Thursday to return on Friday. Son says, “we’ll sit down and pick new dates. Sometime within the next year we can use the same tickets.”
Son came, we looked at possible dates (he does have a life of his own, y’know, and not just his job). From my point of view it doesn’t matter. Intern Girl can fill my job while I’m gone, whenever I take another week off. (I know, but Boss Lawyer doesn’t know, that she’s been sending out résumés. At least I’ll keep her busy for a while.) Sometime in March looks good.
Son decided to drive back to Boston while it was still bright out. (Husband never got up to say hello.) At this point I was mildly disappointed, but I can handle that. I was also tired, having been up since before dawn. I notified the people we were planning to visit, and I was glad to get their answering machines because I didn’t feel like talking.
When Husband got up for his afternoon/evening meds, I brought him up to date. “I have an idea,” he said, “since they’ll all be up here this summer, we don’t have to go.” I snapped. It wasn’t just that I haven’t gone anywhere for three years. We were going to all this trouble for him – it’s not easy traveling with an aged child – and he had the nerve (selfishness, insensitivity, whatever) to decide he wasn’t going? Meanwhile, once again I’m worried about his huffing and puffing, and he says, “I was running around.” Running around? Except for cleaning the cat box (because “no one else does it right,”) he’d been in bed all day! I’ll kill him!
I’m cooling off by today, but, y’know, I was beginning to do the what ifs. I might get off with “justifiable homicide” or temporary insanity; certainly, he’s driving me nuts. Or I could go to jail. Three meals a day that I wouldn’t have to cook. I could work in the library or teach reading. I wouldn’t have to worry about driving at night. They’d have to cover my medical care, and I wouldn’t have to pay $900 a month for insurance. I swear, it was beginning to look good.
He’s safe for a while longer. I think maybe he’s afraid that I might want to move to the south, and he’s so sure he won’t like it that he won’t even consider it. Actually, Florida wouldn’t be my first choice, but he just might like it there. It’s my job to take care of him, and I will stay wherever he wants, but I’d enjoy looking around. But like a child, he just digs in his heels and yells NO!
Why didn’t anyone warn me of this thirty-five years ago?
