Life in the Middle Seat

subtitled: I was never cut out for jet-setting
Friday:
The best laid plans of Salamanders and Socialists are apparently thwarted by the Forces That Be quite efficiently. The commuter train line that terminates in my little town has as its other terminus the Big City Airport. How convenient can it get? Trains leave once an hour for beautiful downtown Philthy, and at least twice an hour during rush hour. I figured there’d be several trains that met our schedule. I even mentioned in my previous entry that The Minion had offered to shelter our car in his garage until we returned.

It was not to be. For some strange reason, all the trains leaving Salamanderville terminated beautiful downtown Philthy, and did not continue on to the airport. There was a train that left shortly before six a.m. that went through to the airport … way too early. The next train didn’t get to the airport in comfortable time to get us through security. So I bit the bullet and drove down to the airport, leaving my beloved Prius in long term parking. They call it “Economy Parking”, and I suppose it is, compared to Los Angeles long term parking ($8.00/day versus nearly $16.00/day).

The Socialist is much taller than I am, so when I made our reservations I specified an aisle seat for him both ways. I elected to sit with him rather than get an aisle or window, and so spent the flights to and from the Left Coast in the middle seat. It is my humble belief that those customers who get stuck in middle seats should be granted some sort of discount. Lunch was edible (some sort of lasagna thingy), and I was actually looking forward to the in-flight movie, which was “Master and Commander”, something I’d wanted to see and hadn’t yet.

Of course, there was something wrong with the movie, so they played “Intolerable Cruelty” instead. This is the movie that was scheduled for the East-bound flights, so not only did I have to put up with George Clooney on my westward flight, I had the exact same movie to look forward to in two days when we returned home. I begin to understand why The Socialist loathes flying so much.

We arrived in LAX an hour early (the Wind Gods were with us), and immediately proceeded to the ground transport area to find a bus schedule and figure out how we were going to get from the airport to some point where a relative could pick us up. Evidently you need to be either a telepath or clairvoyant to figure out the bus system at the airport though, because there were neither bus schedules nor people to explain the bus system available. After perhaps half an hour of doing the lost waif act, The Socialist and I decided that renting a car might be the best approach to this after all.

Every try to figure out what car company to rent from by looking at their shuttle buses? What sounds better … “Budget” or “Dollar”? Which one sounds less expensive? Do we go with a known entity like Hertz or Avis? Do we go with “Enterprise” because we like Star Trek? Finally we ended up going with Alamo, and I really can’t tell you why except their bus looked friendly.

The bus may have been friendly looking but the office was congested and anything but friendly. Stand in line, get yelled at when one of twenty windows scattered throughout the room is freed up and you don’t notice immediately, listen to the rental guy as he mumbles his way through the rental process, and finally wander out with a parking space number and a slip of paper, trying to figure out what hit you: That was my take on the information. All was not bad though; they had clean restrooms, and after six hours on the plane, clean restrooms were most appreciated.

The Socialist knew the roads well enough to get us to the town where his grandfather lives with little trouble. As we approached though, we decided that that evening was our last, best chance for getting to eat at our mutually favorite restaurant. So before we even contacted anyone to let them know we had arrived, we stopped by the Mongolian barbecue and had ourselves an early Valentine’s meal.

After we’d eaten we drove the short remaining distance to The Socialist’s old home, where we’d be spending the weekend. One of the Socialist’s aunts was keeping his grandfather company. A younger brother of The Socialist’s grandmother was also there. He is a retired minister, and performed the service on Saturday. The Socialist’s aunt has been staying with his grandfather for the past week or so, and has been doing a major clean-up job in the house. The place looked far better than it ever had in previous visits.

Saturday:
I was operating on a time zone three hours in the future to California, and ended up pleading exhaustion and falling into bed around midnight California time. I woke about eight hours later, several hours before The Socialist, and spent a little time reading in bed and generally relaxing. I suppose that I should have left our room and spent some of the morning socializing, but truth be told, I was a little intimidated by the prospects of the day, and wanted to have a little time to myself before everything began.

We left for the funeral home about an hour before people were to start arriving. The chapel was absolutely beautiful, with high arching wooden beams and stained glass windows of flowers and arches that exactly caught the midday sun and cast yellow, brown, orange and green splashes on the adjacent beams inside the chapel. The door was also wood, but with a large cast metal insert of stylized flowers in bas relief. It was simple, and very soothing, and I found myself exploring a bit and admiring the architecture and design that had gone into the place.

There was a confusion of introductions, with names and faces that remain a jumbled confusion in my memory today. The service was fairly religious and fairly standard, with several people who knew The Socialist’s grandmother speaking of some of their remembrances. I learned a lot about the woman I hadn’t known before, including the fact that she’d been a fairly successful beauty queen/model in her time.

I noticed that when most people stood up to tell their recollections, the stories usually ended being more about themselves than about the deceased. The Socialist spoke about his grandmother too, and his words struck me as different from what the others had said. He said little about himself, and stressed his grandmother’s selflessness, her strength of will and her tough yet loving approach to child-rearing. I paraphrase heavily here, but he gave her credit for the man he’s grown to be. In my book, that is great praise. I know the man he is today, and it speaks highly of the woman who oversaw most of his youth.

It was his grandmother’s request that “Amazing Grace” be played at her funeral, on bagpipes. A pipe player in tartan led us to the niche where her ashes were to be interred. It turned out later that the piper had played on many recordings, and we actually had a CD with his playing on it for the reception afterwards. The service at the internment was brief, with family lingering a bit afterwards. I felt awkward, unsure what to do. I’m not really family, but was treated as though I were. It was warming, and unexpected.

There was a short, informal dessert afterwards, and then we headed back to the house. I can only assume I was not nearly as exhausted as the others, and I know how drained I was. We went out to dinner at a local seafood house that evening (the only place we could get a last-minute reservation for eight on Valentine’s Day). I headed to bed shortly after we returned to the house, and slept somewhat fitfully.

Sunday:
Little to say here. Back to the rental car company, drop off the car, shuttle to the airport, kill time at the airport, get on the plane, hours of tedium, with the same movie playing as had played two days previously on the plane. Again in the middle seat, I worked on the interview questions that I still had to do for five of the eight people I’d promised them to, and read some of the new book of C.J. Cherryh’s collected short stories. Philthy was cold – very cold compared to California weather. While I’d only spent a single full day in California, my internal clock had already been reset, and I was still bouncing off the walls come midnight our time.

There’s so much more I wanted to tell. I can go days with nothing of substance to journal, and then I have a weekend such as this where I have far more to write than my tired fingers are willing to type. I suspect I’ll return to this weekend again in future entries. It’s given me much to think about.

I will end with this. I knew I had a good man in the Socialist. Yes, he exasperates and teases and provokes and infuriates. But he’s a deep man, and beneath the surface turbulence is a steady and reliable stream of strength. I got to see a glimpse of that this weekend, and I treasure that glimpse.