I.
I don’t mind being dirty, but feeling my sinuses begin to run and my hands begin to crack from the cold is the worst feeling, even worse than the hard, freezing asphalt wearing on the knees of my jeans, worse than the sweat beginning to soak into my first layer of shirts. So much for not needing a shower this morning, I think, in between clambering around on the ground and rubbing more grease into my pants and coat.
It’s what has to be done though, and I’m just hoping and praying that it’s the last little streak of bad luck during the final week of this year. Why is this happening now? Why? I try not to think about this as I get the old tire off and jack the car up a little higher to accommodate the new one.
If it were warmer, I might have been able to change the tire in under half an hour. As it is, the tools have been sitting in my trunk out in the open for a week, the cold cuts through my hands and makes it hard to grip things, and so it takes me longer, about forty-five minutes, with the wind whipping the hair into my face, grease creeping further under my fingernails, and me hefting tires in and out of my trunk.
Still, I suppose it makes me feel empowered. I am on the road to work–albeit dirty, tired, and disgruntled–by ten o’clock, having taken care of something most people would just get upset and call a tow truck for. It’s the small victories, after all, that makes life what it is.
II.
I’m already strapped into the airplane, the belt loosely across my waist because I don’t like to feel it pinching too much. After wedging my bag under the seat (it barely fits), I’ve opened my crumpled McDonald’s bag and am unwrapping my last egg McMuffin sandwich to enjoy during the beginning part of my return home. I take the second delicious-but-so-bad-for-you bite and see a shadow fall over the light above me and my two seat mates.
“Excuse me,” the flight attendant says. “I need 16C to de-plane. Are you 16C?” She says this to the gentleman who was in my seat when my cousin and I finally boarded. I’d been ready to sit in the aisle the entire flight, always keeping my limbs tucked in and my head rigidly upright in the middle of the seat so as not to violate the personal space of the woman to my left, but having found someone already in the aisle seat, I simply contented myself with the one next to the window.
“That’s me,” I say, acknowledging her.
“Well we need that seat, and you need to de-plane,” the flight attendant says, rather tartly.
I know this is one of the hazards of flying standby, especially having been the second-to-last person called. Some jerk probably arrived monstrously late with a full fare ticket and was now demanding to be seated on this flight. Even though generally this is not supposed to happen, it does, and so I go without a fuss. After all, there is a flight out for the rest of the day every hour on the hour. I won’t be inconvenienced for long.
Walking a little awkwardly (and slightly shame-faced, although I’ve done nothing wrong) up the aisle of the plane, I am stopped by a different flight attendant who is upset that I just left.
“But you all told me to go,” I say to her, and the ground crew who has gathered on the breezeway backs up my story, even though she still regards me with suspicion.
At the gate again, the gate agent and I banter about who gets what priority.
“I’ve always wondered why sometimes my husband gets listed ahead of me, even though I’m higher priority,” she says, chuckling.
I suppose in situations like this, it has paid to be nice. She had even seemed surprised when the call came through that actually seat 14C was needed, or passenger Fie/J and not Abr/K or 16C, and I had waved her off and told her just to keep my cousin on the stupid plane since I was already out of my seat and standing there anyhow.
“I did beat my cousin at the check-in process,” I suggest, and she nods.
“That’s it,” she says, and then tells me I’m listed for the next flight. She smiles kindly and then leaves me to wait for the next half an hour to get home.
At least now there’s time to finish my last egg McMuffin.
III.
Blob’s Park in Jessup, Maryland, exists in two spots in my memory warehouse.
Its first location is set with the rest of the memories of my childhood, and it is this memory that I reference the most often. Really, my mental version of Blob’s Park is made from an aggregation of memories from all the times I had visited as a child. I see the stage looming up above my head, the dance floor stretching on for ages, the glittering disco ball rotating above us and sending spots of light here and there. I see the deer heads on the walls, the trophy sharks and fowl, the German flag hung like a banner in one corner. There are steins of beer and soda and always chips and pretzels over wax paper in red plastic baskets. Then I see me as a little girl, trying to step in time to my grandfather’s beat–polkas generally go in 3/4 time, waltzes in 4/4–trying not to step on his feet or stumble, although he holds on to both of my hands tightly in case I do.
The last memory is from high school, when we ran a race here. We did not go inside the dance hall, which I found ironic, but instead stayed outside. Kids around me wondered what the inside of the hall looked like and I tried to tell them, but how to convey the place without making it sound trite? It is just a dance hall, but to me it is more than that. Instead, we focus on the rolling hills behind the property, the smell of cow manure, the long, circuitous trail we have to run in a few hours. I think in the end this is my favorite course, because even in the beginning of the run I smell grass and sweat and dirt, three scents that bring me right back to every time I have ever run hard outside.
But we gather as a family here, and it’s the first time in a while that I’ve seen my grandfather smiling. We are there to celebrate the 60 years that they have been married.
“Frankly,” Grandma had said to me as we waited for our rides, “I didn’t think it would last this long!”
But it has lasted this long. The band is not particularly good, but polka is polka to most of us, and it doesn’t matter anyway. The cousins and I sit at the kid’s table, only now we are old enough to get a pitcher of beer each, and we eat crab cake sandwiches, fruit, smokey cheese, and spend the evening taking pictures of one another and laughing.
IV.
“Avatar” was enjoyable the second time around with friends who came from all over to see it with us. We tell stories and generally have an okay time. I’m glad that they seem to accept my brothers and cousin without blinking much, so that I can let down my guard a little and not worry (like I always do) if everyone is having fun. On the way back to Rockville, we spend the time bantering about the differences in zombie infections, because it is important to know these things for when the apocalypse hits.
“I’d much rather it be zombies than a rage infection,” my cousin says from the back seat, sensibly. When I ask why, he informs me that it is preferable to have shambling zombies than running, enraged semi-humans chasing you. I can do nothing but agree.
It is an ideal night, and one that ends very late in the back of a nice car, driving down dark roads through the rain and fog.
V.
I am by myself in first class, on a plane to Baltimore. Heading north again, this time feeling very different, very much older. I manage to finish an entire novel on the flight over, some trash about a kickass vampire hunter. I’m also able to write a brief journal entry about my experiences this day and the last few.
It’s a moment of solitude for me, a moment that I have been waiting to savor for a while now. Even when my seat mate sits down–a quiet, withdrawn man who has on hiking shoes and reads a John Grisham novel the entire flight without even a word of acknowledgement–I’m thankful for the space in first class and the darkness that descends on the cabin as they dim the lights for the trip. It makes me feel alone on the plane, cocooned in my seat by the roar of the engines and the pressure of the plane as it cuts through the night.
Sometimes I can see dim patches of grey as we come further north, and I wonder what they are. Then I realize that they are long stretches of snow broken by trees and roads and houses. As we begin our descent, the street lights glitter more than usual, winking on and off as we come closer to landing.
It’s Christmas, it’s the holidays, and I’m happy to visit somewhere else I can call home just before the new year.
