Road Trip

Well, we’re back from quite an eventful 72 hours.

On Christmas Eve, my wife’s grandmother, affectionately known as Gram, died after a brief illness at age 91. She lived out near Toledo, Ohio, where most of my wife’s family live, so I’ve only seen her, and them, maybe three or four times. The little I knew of Gram first-hand showed me a woman with a very sharp wit and downright funny personality. I recall driving in car with her, my wife, and my mother-in-law, racing to get to a wedding five years ago, and Gram mercilessly and – to be quite honest – laugh-out-loud hilariously berating my mother-in-law’s driving. I also remember her looking lovingly at our first daughter when Little One was only three months old and saying, in a quiet voice, “She looks like a little elf.”

So a memorial mass was being held this past weekend, a date selected when most of the family could get back in town. For us, this entailed a nine-hour drive to Toledo. Packing for two toddlers, the wife, and myself for three days plus a nine-hour drive has now given me a superb appreciation of Napoleonic logistics. First, we had to empty out the Impala’s trunk of all my wife’s company stuff. Then, in goes in the portable crib, the stroller, four bags of luggage, overcoats, suit jacket, board games, and a whole extra bag of toiletries. In the backseat goes the spare booster seat, the portable DVD player, a CD player, bags of food, bottles of water, cases of CDs and DVDs, a bag of books, blankets, stuffed animals. Up front with us is my wife’s twenty-pound bag (I still don’t know what she carries in it), and a couple of books for the passenger to read.

Anyhoo, we left Friday morning just before 9 and got to our destination by 6:30. Two stops – a short one for gas and a bathroom break, the other for lunch, all totaling up for an hour. So, 590 miles in 8.5 hours … comes to about 70 miles an hour, I think. Not bad, considering I drive like I’m 70 years old and the wife drives like Bonnie after Clyde’s held up another rural bank.

Our hosts were very lovely people, really superb, who went so far out of their way to accommodate us and C’s parents, and without complaint. I can’t compliment my wife’s family enough. They are all positive and all successful – without exception. There’s a doctor, a lawyer, a pair of architects, a yoga entrepreneur, two teachers, a super salesman, and all their children excelling in high schools and colleges, some overseas. I felt truly welcome and – very important for a nervous introvert like myself – I felt at home in their homes.

Saturday we had to get up early and make quick use of the showers. Gram’s memorial mass went off without a hitch, and was quite moving, particularly the short introductory eulogy given by my wife’s cousin. C did a reading, and I sat in the pews with a sick Patch flooping in my arms, getting all prideful, thinking: I can see her doing this full-time. It’s a running joke in our family that my wife would make a great politician. I’m talking about, say, mayor of our town. She’s extremely friendly and outgoing, yin to my yang, and, well, I saw her up there and thought she did a great job.

There was a two-hour luncheon afterward. I met some very friendly, interesting, and funny people there. Little One hooked up with a whole bunch of other little ones, and they ran through the entire restaurant (closed save for this party) like a pack of wolf cubs. I had a big hunk of lasagna and primarily attended to Patch, who was coming down with something funky. Warm, lethargic yet unable to get comfortable. We gave her Baby Tylenol, but sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

Got back to C’s aunt and uncle’s place. There was a family get-together there, spent reminiscing about Gram and the talk turned to further funeral planning. I felt out of place, so I went to our bedroom and began reading The Resurrectionist, by Gary K. Wolf, another blast-from-the-past. Then I napped for 2 hours straight. When I got up, Patch was feeling very overheated. My mother-in-law and her sister were going out to bring back some take-out, and would also buy a thermometer. They got one of those new-fangled thing-a-ma-bobs that you just place against the baby’s temple for twenty seconds and you get a reading. We monitored Patch all night and it never went up to a 100, though it came close. We continued the Tylenol regimen.

Next morning, however, it hit me. From both ends. I had some sort of flu. Was it from Patch? Hmmm.

C’s uncle made them all omelets; I had a bowl of Honey-Nut Cheerios which I threw up an hour later. We showered, packed, and got Napoleon’s army back on the trail to Moscow again, only now we had one more stop. Feeling achy and crummy, I could only repeat: Just get through this. Just get through this.

We stopped for an hour-long visit with my wife’s other aunt and uncle, a few towns over. Extremely nice people; the visit made my physical discomfort go away. They have a high-school aged daughter who played Hands Down with the Little One, and later they baked some sugar cookies. The visit regrettably had to be cut short, for it was getting close to 2 o’clock, and we wanted to be home before midnight.

What a trip home! Not only was I feeling quite under the weather, the weather was feeling quite pissed at us. I swear it was as if a massive thundercloud sat over our car and followed us east, at 70 miles an hour, pounding us relentlessly. Winds were so heavy at times the car actually moved six inches to the right or left. C took the first 300 miles, I took the rest. And after I was in the driver’s seat for two or three hours, rump petrified, every one else asleep in the car, we hit the fog banks in the Pennsylvanian mountains. It was one of the most surreal things I ever saw. I had to slow the Impala down to 40 mph, that’s how thick this stuff was. I half-expected to see golden gates and a stairway (escalator, actually) leading straight up to St. Peter’s toll booth.

And Patch! How can a 16-month-old hold so much liquid! Twice she threw up – bits of banana and chicken mixed in with pints of icky-smelling fluid. Both times we had to pull over and change her in the rain, swab down the baby seat and various dolls and blankets she spewed out upon. Thank God she wasn’t crying through all this. Kinda taking it stoically, and floopily. We deduced she and I had the same thing, some type of a stomach flu.

Well, we got home, finally, at 11:20. C put the girls to bed, I fired up the boiler and jacked up the thermostat. Trembled with fatigue and illness, I managed to unload most of the car with her help. Then, I stripped down to my undies, fell on the couch, pulled over a comforter, and was out, until 8:45 Monday morning, when the Little One padded down the stairs, came up to me, kissed my forehead, and announced, “Hungry!”