Life’s a Traveling Circus
Life’s a Traveling Circus
I hate flying. Thomas Harris (the guy who wrote the Hannibal Lecter books) said “the price of imagination is fear”, and, in the context of MY psyche, that is so true! One of the (minor) reasons I was happy to move to Texas was because I knew I would never again have to set foot on an airplane in order to visit my kids and grandkids.
Ha! As many of us know, when dealing with an elderly parent sibling love and camaraderie can vanish in a puff of selfishness and old resentments, and all bets are off. In October, I found myself informed by my attorney that a court-appointed mediation had been scheduled for January 8, 2015, and I (of course) would have to fly back for it. Not only did I have to fly again, I now had THREE MONTHS to conduct a leisurely freak-out about it.
So I did what I always do: I turned to prayer. I begged and pleaded not to have to go. Did it matter that I would be seeing my older brother and my sister-in-law, and my very good friend, all of whom I’m crazy about? Nah. What mattered was my imagination run riot. (Wintertime! Ice on the wings! Thunderstorms! Lightning strikes!) I couldn’t even remember one of my favorite quotes from Mark Twain, I was so obsessed. (He said, “in my lifetime, I’ve worried about a million things; and one or two of them actually came true.”) The fact that I was working on a beautiful leather journal to give to my good friend wouldn’t deter the fright-fest. (There are, after all, UPS, FedEx, and the good old post office for alternative delivery methods.) In between bouts of snivelling and whining there were some of the noble “okay, if it’s Your will that I go . . . (but please don’t make me do this”) prayers, but really, they were hardly sincere.
At last came the day before the fateful day. I was glued to my computer 24 hours before departure time so I could get low numbers on my boarding passes (more on boarding passes later; I’m absolutely obsessive about them). It’s the longest distance I’ve ever flown alone. Is that pathetic or what? Couldn’t sleep the night before; nauseous on the way to the airport. (The kids told us it was really easy to find, airport signs everywhere along the way. I didn’t see a single one until five miles out.) Made it with plenty of time (it was easy) and the first of many mini-miracles was performed.
When I reached the TSA agent in the security line she took me aside (uh-oh) and said to me, “see this small print on your boarding pass? ‘TSA-Pre’? That means you can go through pre-approved security.” How did that get on my boarding pass? I have no idea. (Well, I do, but you can draw your own conclusions.) So I breezed through security, no taking off the tennies, jacket, unloading electronics, etc. Both legs of the flight were incredibly smooth. Weather that had been cloudy leaving Austin (oh no! storms!) turned into beautiful blue skies. I could even let go of my fear enough to be royally bored. (Amazing!) More mini-miracles.
I’d scheduled my time as closely as possible. Fly in Wednesday afternoon, mediation Thursday, a long lunch with my good friend Friday, fly out Saturday afternoon. Everything went perfectly. So far. Mediation lasted until 7:30 p.m. Thursday night, but got settled, lunch Friday with my friend was wonderful (she loved the journal; she and her husband used to own a vineyard in Oregon).
Had dinner Friday night with my cousin, my niece and her boys, and my brother and sister-in-law (who makes really good enchiladas.) And now, the tale of the boarding passes.
It didn’t occur to me until a break in the mediation on Thursday that I would be at a restaurant when it was time to print my boarding passes for Saturday. Panic! I texted Mike and instructed him to make sure he was home Friday so I could walk him through the process (that’s how controlling I get about this issue). Everything went haywire. I couldn’t walk him through the computer process, so he went over to my son’s house to have Lola print them out. (Relief . . . for about five minutes.) He called to say Lola decided it would be easier to have them emailed. (Storm clouds on the horizon.) A few minutes later I noticed a message on my phone from Southwest. (Storm clouds averted.) When my friend went to the bathroom, I clicked on my email to get the passes and discovered that email was not set up on my new phone. (It didn’t occur to me to set it up when I got the new phone because I never got email on my old phone. Thunderheads now rolling in rapidly. I took several large gulps of wine.)
On the way home from lunch, I had the happy thought that maybe she’d emailed them to my brother also. When he got home I asked, and he said oh, yeah. We went down to his office to print them. Pulled them up from his email. DO NOT PRINT THESE PASSES in large black letters. I went into the guest bedroom, called Mike, and told him I was going to slap Lola up into a peak as soon as I got home. Finally I managed to get the email on my phone set up. No boarding passes. (Bolts of lightning now crashing down around me.) Then, behold! I opened up my iChat to send a nasty text to Mike detailing what I was going to do to Lola, and there were the boarding passes. Major miracle!
Saturday afternoon at Sac International. TSA pre-approval. Put my phone on the scanner and breezed right through. Rainy day, slight delay, smooth flight to L.A. Cloudy weather all the way to Austin, another smooth, boring flight until the descent, but even that wasn’t bad. Nighttime, freezing cold on the ground, but my lovely daughter brought hot green tea, salted cashews, dried mango and a dark chocolate bar when she picked me up. All small miracles in the scale of things, but huge to me. God DOES watch over us, and He ALWAYS has our best interests close to His heart.
