February 27, 2013
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Pre-Takeoff Jitters
I woke up this morning running lists in my head. I am driving down to Bama saturday for about a week, and such extreme distruptions in my retirement schedule require lists. Things to do. Things to remember. Things not to forget. Did I pay the credit card? When I was trying to sleep this morning the list was endless and I could see things falling off the end to be left unattended. When I got up and sat down to write up the list…I have three things.
This warns me of impending disaster.
Oversight is inevitable.
I’m not sure whether this is a sign of increasing miles logged on the car (I will be driving a rental this time) or of miles logged on my psyche, but I do not look forward to this trip with the indifference I once had for driving 714 miles at a crack. It’s a relatively easy trip. I like to drive. I am just becoming increasingly superstitious about the odds and potential car accidents. I have lucked out so many times now…
And like my Grandmother and her obsession with the Mackinac Bridge and my sister, who spent four years of her life on the wrong side of it (she went to school in Marquette, which meant she had to cross the bridge every time she went to school or came home) I don’t know how to stop the fretting once it starts. I’ll be fine. I am just genetically predisposed to fuss.
Unfortunately this trip comes at a bad time in Annie’s young life. I suspect we will be re-enrolling in Obedience II because a.) mom has been lax in her practice, and b.) Mom is leaving the state for a week in the middle of the class. We didn’t go last night because of the weather (having gone the week before through incredibly ugly weather to get essentially a private lesson since we were the only dog and mom there.) I would take her to Bama with me but she has a few bad habits and the people I am going to visit have some worse habits than Annie. The neighborhood has at least 6 strays dogs that regularly cruise the streets and Annie behaves badly around other dogs. And I did not rescue her and spend a pocketful of cash on obedience lessons, spaying, tags, toys and winter coats to take her to Alabama and lose her.
Nor will Riley, the door-bolter, be going to visit a family of door-wide-openers… (They are not terrible people. They are people–apparently an entire community of people–who have, essentially, farm dogs, those unleashed, unchained, untied dogs that hang around the house and get fed now and then. I am more hands-on and obsessive about my dog ownership. I am all over the days when the family dog just disappears for three or five days and life goes on as usual. Been there, done that, don’t ever want to do it again.)
I am going to Bama to spend a week or so with my father while Jenell comes up to Indiana to inspect her family. One of her daughters fell unexpectedly ill a week or so ago, and while she has apparently recovered, the alarm has been sounded. (Also there are a raft of grandchild birthdays to be celebrated in March every year.) Apparently “Janean and them”, whoever ‘they’ are, are going down later in the month. To further accentuate the sense of urgency, Jenell’s son had a heart attack two weeks ago. (Also recovered.) I was under the impression he lives in Birmingham, which is about 100 miles from her house, but then, he moves around and I have learned not to hold Jenell too tightly to specific details. She wants to see her family. She has every right to do so. My father wants to stay home and not be driven around the country. He has every right to do so. I can make that happen. And it is the very least I can do.
I’ll be fine once I get there. It’s not even the drive: it’s thinking about the drive.
So this is really not about going to Alabama at all: it’s about aging, about having lived through (or around, or near, or long-distance from or an artificially safe distance away from) potential disaster too long. Poor Lynn is going to have to drive over that bridge…* It’s about fussing about things I never thought twice about twenty years ago. I am terrified about walking on ice (what if I fall?) driving in snow (what if I go in the ditch?) I’ve driven through blizzards: I live in Michigan. It wasn’t fun but I survived.
*I’ve even driven across Big Mac. It’s a long way down to the water, which is hard on those of us who are not fond of heights. When the wind blows the bridge sways, which is technologically clever but emotionally alarming. And–while I do understand the theory behind it–the Big Mac is a series of holes loosely crocheted together, which I do not care for at all. There is no doubt in my mind that bridge will out-live me by centuries. It certainly has out-lived the woman it bucked off into the drink. The fact that that even CAN happen dampens my enthusiasm for inter-peninsular travel by the time I’ve reached Alma. I once narrowly missed the opportunity to ride my bike across the damned thing, which broke the hearts of my travel companions and came very close to instilling in me a belief in divine intervention.
I am going to turn into my grandmother, whom I loved dearly and to whom we were forbidden to mention entire lists of subjects with each visit. Or my father’s mother, who treated herself for skin cancer (she covered it with foundation whenever she went to the doctor,) diabetes (she avoided all sugars until she passed out from low blood sugar in her doctor’s office,) allergies to MSG (essentially she stopped eating most foods) none of which she had when she died of dementia in her 90s. I don’t expect to live as long as she did. Perhaps it will save me at least some of the worry.
