Vacance # 1 in EIGHT Years.....Day One

Got up early this morning at Dad's place before taking off to the Buffalo Airport. Which meant I was staggering around walking into coffee tables by 8:45 a.m., bleary eyed and half blind. Himself was awake since some unGodly hour (probably six) having already brewed the coffee, ground the flour to make the bread to toast, cut sixteen chords of firewood, went two miles to grab a newspaper and probably saved a few orphan skeet shooters along the way,("You're holding that rifle the wrong way, son." "Gee, thanks Mister!" "Think nothing of it, all in a day's work.") before returning home to find his eldest child crankily muttering and peering closely at the toaster for not toasting faster....("Perhaps if you plugged it IN, Son..." "I knew that.") We had a great time though, and laughed a lot, and he put this whole joblessness state into perspective; "I think you should avoid the mistake of not having fun this time. You've been given a second chance this time. Enjoy it. You won't get it again." Wonderful to hear, and a relief, especially coming from a parent.

As if to put the fear of God into me, the weather en route to Buffalo from St.Cat's got icky, messy, snowy and downright PMS-teenage girl-ish. In short, it was just unpleasant. Customs were charming, and the customs officer was basically Steve Carrell's twin. He wanted to know EVERYTHING, what I was reading, what my job was, how long I'd be away, did I want to work at his job etc. etc. So that was fine. Got to the Buffalo airport, where I attempted to work out the processing machine (you swipe your passport, and if you've ordered your ticket online, it just spits out your boarding pass) and THAT I managed. It was reading the damn thing afterwards that left me flummoxed. I stood there, shifting from one foot to the other, like a middle aged toddler, with a lopsided goofball grin on my face, trying to look as attractively spaztic as humanly possible, when some kind US Airways official, seeing my confusion (you'd have to have been blind not to notice it, I was doing everything but a Dustin Hoffman Rainman impression) promptly explained the whole process to me. ("Proceed to THIS gate. WAIT there for the plane. Get ONTO the plane. FLY away.") He was most helpful.

I got to the gate and found there was another plane en route to Charlotte, where the stopover was. Hmmm. Was this like the bus terminal at Toronto, where they just move everything up, and you grab whatever bus is going to your destination, regardless of when they say it's leaving? Maybe they were going to put more planes on today. Maybe it was a busy day for Charlotte, North Carolina. Maybe there was a sale on. Who knew? So I asked the US Airways guy (I can't BELIEVE how patient airline people are in the face of mindnumbing stupidity like mine) "Ummm....I hardly ever fly, so this may be a dumb question, but has my flight been moved up, like a bus? I mean, it says for 1:30, and it's only 11:30, so do I get on this one or do I wait?" He laughed and assured me there were two more flights for Charlotte, and mine was the next. Of course, this made sense, and even if it hadn't, I should have known that I had a specific seat on the plane. But then, the idea of a seat reservation hadn't occurred to me in the confusion of just getting there. One forgets the logical details when one is nervous. At least, I do.

Then I saw the plane I was to get on. It was the smallest plane I'd ever seen. The crowd was murmuring about the size of it. It was twelve windows long. I'd been on buses that were larger. Oh well....I said to myself, "Well, this is a good thing, it's easier to fly a smaller aircraft. Not so many instruments probably, and they're probably a lot easier to reach.") It's amazing what we justify to ourselves in the potential face of imminent death. It's also amazing what goes through your head when you're looking out the window and noticing that you're suddenly several thousand feet up in the air, you think of things like, "OK. If we fell out of the sky NOW, we'd definitely be dead. Thirty seconds ago, maybe not, but NOW, definitely."

I got to Charlotte, North Carolina, which has a VERY large airport. Our arrival gate was at one end of the airport. My departure gate was at the other end. Fortunately, I had about two hours to find it and make my way through the shopping mall en route to get there. It's so big that airport staff drive oversized golf carts through it, hauling old and infirm people around from one end to the other. ("Driver? Oh driver, could you stop off at the Denny's? I want a bite before my flight.")

Gate 19, my gate was, wouldn't you know it, at the VERY end. Fortunately, I had my copy of Pride and Prejudice to read, and I must say, it is oddly incongruous to read about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy trading polite barbs while gawking at all the hunky American soldiers and students coming back for the Christmas holidays. Do all Americans under thirty look like football players or GAP models? Most of them back home look pallid, scurvy and malnourished. Lord knows what I must look like to them. I hid behind my book, which I noticed garnished me some attention. Some young jock sat opposite me and stared for a full five minutes at the cover of my book. Not at me, AT THE BOOK. As if it mystified him. I don't know whether he was wondering where the earphones were (EVERYBODY is plugged into some sort of musical listening device down here I noticed) or if he'd just never seen anybody under sixty in jeans and a hoody read a novel before, but he was definitely staring at the phenomenon. Very odd.

My flight to Sarasota was a delight. I sat next to a University of St.Louis student named Mike, who was a business major, a freshman as they call them down here, an only child who was from Atlanta, in spite of the fact that he didn't have one iota of a southern accent, although he'd lived there since he was five. We chatted about Americans and Canadians and what the differences were, and he proved to me again that Americans really, are quite adorable and far smarter than we give them credit for at home. He was subtle, funny, intelligent, quiet and he listened, and had intelligent things to say. He was quite impressed that I was starting life anew, and we agreed that the most important thing was to DO something you LIKED in life. Nice kid. I'll probably never see him again, but it was nice to connect to somebody, and remember, "You know, screw prejudices and preconceived notions, it's with individuals that we deal with in this life; and THAT'S what's important."

Mom and Wayne picked me up at the airport, and it was wonderful to see them. Mom was waiting for me at the foot of the elevator, and I heard her speak before I saw her. Mother never yells, she just said, "Trev" very clearly, and of course, some ancient memory we have from childhood always can hear your Mom's voice in a crowd, no matter how quietly she speaks. I looked down, and there she was, beautiful as ever, all in white, smiling, almost giddy with excitement at seeing me. I was touched, and it was so lovely seeing her there. Nothing quite removes the blahs of everyday humdrum existence like knowing and SEEING that you are loved unconditionally and without reservation. She gave me a big hug and talked excitedly about my arrival and what we were going to do while I was here. It was lovely. I felt about six again, but this time, in a good way. You don't get that feeling very often when you hit forty-two. That you're SPECIAL to somebody. We drove back, gabbing all the way and I could smell the moist night air again, it was warm and I'd forgotten how different the air is down here. Fragrant and delicious. I stayed up a bit, and then hit the sack, and for the first time in a month, slept a blessed eight hours at night. I got up today, and the first thing I did, as you can see, well, was pick breakfast!