Another Day in the Country
The nightmares
of California dreamin’
© Another Day in the Country
Once again, although not all that often, I’m in another part of the country, visiting my family in California.
I planned this trip to coincide with my grandson getting back home from college for the summer, giving him time to settle in, to get all of his wisdom teeth pulled, and to start recovering.
I then would show up to keep him company before he has to start working at a summer job.
That was the plan, but do family plans ever work out quite the way we imagine them?
When I scheduled this trip a while back, my motivation was spending x amount on an airline credit card I received with an introductory offer of highly discounted tickets the next time I’d fly.
“It’s costing me less than $300 round trip” I bragged to my sister, “so how could I not go?”
When time got close to my leaving date, I thought, why haven’t I heard from my friendly airline company as I usually do?
In the past, I’d started getting emails reminding me of the flight coming up and making offers for hotels and rental cars. This time there were no emails.
Finally, I stopped my incessant spring yard work, got on the airline app I’d just installed on my phone, and checked the flight.
No flight was scheduled.
How could this be? I’d done this a lot of times. I’m a seasoned traveler. I’d received a wonderful bargain! It was two days until travel time, and I had no ticket.
In California, relatives had arranged schedules to pick me up. My grandson with four fewer teeth was expecting his Baba to show up and make soup, keep him company in his misery, and play games. How could I not show up?
Perhaps this was a sign, as my sister would say, that I should rethink my plans.
I considered the odds. I imagined the scramble over changing times. I checked the airline to see whether the same flight schedule still was available.
Then I made my decision. I’d forge ahead, bite the bullet, learn my lesson, and pay twice as much, using all the airline miles I had accumulated, to get there at the appointed time.
When making family vacation plans, I always anticipate time together and imagine all the fun we’ll have. I rarely anticipate hazards. I’m optimistic.
Flying was a piece of cake. It was Memorial Day weekend, and Saturday was quiet. Folks already were at their destinations by then.
Richard, my son-in-law, texted, “I’m your Uber driver today. Text me when you’ve got your bag.”
He pulled up at the curb, hugged me hello, and loaded my suitcase in back. We were off.
He pulled out a face mask and said, “Jana says I should wear one of these. I caught the cold Dagfinnr came home with from college.”
We laughed, but it wasn’t a laughing matter. Colds are terribly contagious.
The next morning at the breakfast table, my daughter was organizing us.
“I’m making a list of all the things you want to do while we’re together,” she said.
I, the octogenarian with asthmatic tendencies said, “Not get sick!”
She handed me Vitamin C and a glass of water and said, “Who else has a request?” with great efficiency.
I set about doing every cold deterrent I knew of and we embarked on our list of fun things to do with as much gusto as we could with two of our party pretty much out of commission already and Jana off solving a crisis at work.
No matter what, within two days of landing, I was now down for the count. My daughter, the only member of the crew still standing, was off to her job.
We were a coughing, hacking, sneezing — a miserable, pathetic crew at home. And this was what I came all this way for?
While Kansas was having a warm spell, California was having a cold spell, and I was freezing, sleeping with my sweatshirt on, shooing errant puppies away from my suitcase, stumbling over my own shoes to find the bathroom in the dark, and trying not to make the dogs bark and wake everyone up.
So much for that “fun” list.
Jana eventually came down with the cold, too. Wonder Woman (I call her, for good reason) was the last to succumb.
Cold symptoms are not gone in just a few days. They have longevity. We are a motley crew, doing the best we can to still have fun going out to eat at outdoor spots that tolerate dogs and have smoothies since my grandson still can’t chew with ease.
Today, while Dagfinnr went to help his mom set up for a fencing tournament on the weekend, I tried lying in the sun on what used to be my back deck, my favorite spot for years.
It was lovely, warm, cozy, quiet an, I thought, warm enough to put my swimsuit on. But, the minute I stepped out the door, the sun went under a cloud.
I made myself comfortable on the outdoor couch, stretched out, and waited, hoping and scanning the sky for the sun to shine again.
“Come on,” I pleaded, “cooperate,” I said to the clouds as they danced over my head, teasing me with maybe 30 seconds of healing rays at a time.
After all this, I can tell you, while I’ve had some miserable moments on this vacation, the ones I’ll remember most will be fun times.
We’ve managed, for instance, to play our new favorite game Wingspan, twice, and I won both games. That isn’t normal. Dagfinnr usually wins hands down, so I know he really isn’t feeling up to par yet.
Yesterday, he and I went to Napa to pick out baby chicks. Of all things, he’d put that on the list of fun things he wanted to do.
I had all kinds of reservations about that request and as kindly as I could tried to scuttle the trip to no avail.
This California household has made a home for chickens. Three hens greeted him when he got back from Cal Poly.
“We need to replenish the flock,” he said as we watched them forage around the hillside.
When he was 8 or 9, I was out here in California with him for the summer. His parents said I could get him chicks.
I’ll never forget our adventure — the readymade house we put together, and driving back from Napa with six chicks, him holding the box of peeping chicks and grinning ear to ear.
This time was the same, only he was driving and I was holding the chicks on another day in the country.