Cracks (composed in air)
There is no peace in this situation. No matter how many years you have thought of it abstractly, when the moment finally comes, you are dumbfounded. You wish that you were the only one to react this way, but it seems the shock is widespread in your family. The person who was with her when she collapsed in her chair to the floor, unresponsive, did not call an ambulance. In her lack of understanding, she called another family member, who called another, and then waited 40 minutes for that one to come over. At which point they called your mother. Almost two hours had passed when they finally airlifted her out to the hospital.
There is no way to make sense of this.
And so you book a flight to Houston, are plagued with electrical fires, deplaning, unheld flights, dead laptops and phones, so that when the guy in the Brookstone store asks about your hubby and tries to find out where you work so he can call and nominate you for Teacher of the Year, it takes all of your willpower not to tell him to go screw himself and stop flirting with you, that maybe you're a terrible teacher and he has no idea.
You only narrowly avoided crying at the gate on the phone with the airTran people, trying not to say But you don't understand. I have to be there now. My grandmother's in the hospital. But then you did say it, and you heard your voice crack and your face flush, and you are raw by the time this guy tries to sell you a $250 universal battery pack and multi-dock charging port since he doesn't have a Mac charger. And you think, as you often do, Why doesn't he see that I am trying to walk away, that I don't want to engage?
Never have you wanted so badly to be back in Texas, to be sleeping in a house you hate, on a hard couch in your jeans with contacts stuck to your eyes. To be under that seashell quilt where your gradmother will limp slowly in wearing her cream-colored nightgown and ask, Do you need anything else? A satin pillowcase? I'll see you in the morning. Goodnight, babe.
There is no way to make sense of this.
And so you book a flight to Houston, are plagued with electrical fires, deplaning, unheld flights, dead laptops and phones, so that when the guy in the Brookstone store asks about your hubby and tries to find out where you work so he can call and nominate you for Teacher of the Year, it takes all of your willpower not to tell him to go screw himself and stop flirting with you, that maybe you're a terrible teacher and he has no idea.
You only narrowly avoided crying at the gate on the phone with the airTran people, trying not to say But you don't understand. I have to be there now. My grandmother's in the hospital. But then you did say it, and you heard your voice crack and your face flush, and you are raw by the time this guy tries to sell you a $250 universal battery pack and multi-dock charging port since he doesn't have a Mac charger. And you think, as you often do, Why doesn't he see that I am trying to walk away, that I don't want to engage?
Never have you wanted so badly to be back in Texas, to be sleeping in a house you hate, on a hard couch in your jeans with contacts stuck to your eyes. To be under that seashell quilt where your gradmother will limp slowly in wearing her cream-colored nightgown and ask, Do you need anything else? A satin pillowcase? I'll see you in the morning. Goodnight, babe.