How I spent my summer vacation – again

 

 Today is August 23^rd and the summer is almost over. The solstice that marks the change in seasons will be here sooner then it seems, the reminders are already in the air. Everything is still tinted the emerald green of summer but not dappled with glints of pure sunshine now, most days are hazy and damp. Living on a coastline has an impending feeling of something coming over the horizon. Sunny days are appreciated but the Victorian ghost story of mist and mystery is the norm most of the time and it is creeping in.

 

Today also marks the beginning of the end of my summer adventure too. The estate sale people, ones I have never met or even talked to, just texts and photos, not even an email, are right now loading the mess of items and furniture I left behind to be carted off and sold. The last of my legacy, the things not included in the 3,000 pounds I could afford to bring back with me. I am sad and anxious and angry. I know that is a lot of ands and very bad form, but it is how I hear myself saying it sometimes out loud and sometimes in my head but always with the punctuated ands. I would have simply rented a UHaul and carted it all back to my basement, not the hoarder items we found, but the rest. I could have gone through things when my mind was quieter, when I was not frozen or frustrated. I should have already been home not halfway across the country on a misty coastline two years before now. The Navy found a way to make that impossible and so here I am with a pittance of things, the most important things I hope and waiting to see if an auction finds value in the rest.

 

There are many things I have no idea why she kept and there are many more that I would have liked to have kept. There were things I threw away not understanding the value of them until I found the other pieces of it in one of several different places or discovered someone had already tossed away parts not asking first. But they are just things, things can be replaced, things are not memories, holding them does not evoke the memory or hold the key to your past. Things just need to be dusted or should be used and enjoyed. I do not need more things to dust, I would not likely use them, and I did bring what gave me joy as well as things that bring me sorrow. If I discover that the sorrow never goes away, I will find a new home for those things too.

 

In the late spring of the year 2020 at the height of covid restrictions when the fear was new and the unknowns were many, I travelled half-way across the country armed with letters from a doctor and a padre and my determination to go take care of my mother after her heart attack. I also took my son and his key belongings, whatever we could cram into the SUV, and set off to take him to a new life and me to limbo.  He was hoping to go back to college and live somewhere that was not misty, grey, and isolated. He wanted to move away from medieval Canada and into the world again and so he should. He deserved to have a life of his own and chance to make it or mess it up where there are many more opportunities to do so. Some day I will tell you all about the trials and tribulations of being his very proud mother.

 

You see my mother was from the silent generation born in the spring of 1938 to a working-class family in England. In 1950 they came here to Canada with hopes and gumption to build a new life. My mother was the eldest of 3 girls that survived with 3 brothers that saw only briefly the world and past into the light. The family was always a matriarchy, boys were few and prized, girls were dutiful and plentiful. My mother was to be the next head of the family and as I was informed at a young age I would follow after her. Our own mini monarchy.

 

In the late spring of the year 2022 at the beginning of living with covid always in our lives I found myself on the same journey. My mother now 84, having lived with untreated breast cancer for the last 2 years was winding down and my employer was fine with me working remotely still from her home. She was still living alone but with daily PSW visits to help her shower and do daily things, a nurse popped in every couple of weeks and the doctor came by too as required. The cleaning lady was in every other Thursday and neighbours ran the odd errand for her. She had not left the house much since the I left late August of 2020 and not at all after her first covid vaccine. She had a stroke that left her with a walker and a few twitches in 2013, diverticulitis, arthritis, fibromyalgia, bursitis, bad knees, and insulin treated type 2 diabetes. She was tough as nails, stubborn as a mule, and could be as mean as sewer rat or as lovely as angel giving me all the more reason to believe the stories my Great Nan told me that we were descended from the Welsh Fae. But now she had pneumonia, and my planned trip to spend another summer with her was shifted from mid May to April 28^th in a rush out the door after a phone call received early one morning.

 

It took me a couple of days to get organized. I had to get my studded winter tires off the car as they are a no-no to have on soon and I was not going to buy new summer tires once I got there. This caused a chain reaction of events that made things far more complicated on my journey. I had to pack for a few days or weeks of winter slash spring and an Ontario summer of breathing soup humidity and heat, my work gear, and forgot any personal items to entertain myself. I passed off the incomplete items left from my secondary duties, forgot to grab any cash for the road, packed a few snacks and kissed my husband goodbye.

 

I steeled myself up and walked out to my loaded SUV a few hours after my husband came home from a 24-hour duty watch. I was on the road again. I love road trips, meandering along new paths to seek out curious things or end up in wonderful places at joyful events. This was not that kind of road trip. It was lonely even with being able to chat with husband and son and friends along the way by hands free phone when I was not in a dead zone. Being able to listen to only my choices of music between CDs and the rare decent radio station was company too. Every song an old friend of sorts that I belted out the words bopping along making passers by think I was looney.

 

Things were much easier this time, no barricades to traverse at provincial borders, a hotel room instead of sleeping in the car planned, no sharing my snacks with a passenger and the trip was so familiar I had made it countless times before. I did not even require google maps to natter at me until closer to Montreal. Easier should have been a warning sign as nothing ever seems to come easy for me. The universe always demands a price and this time the price was going to be high.

 

At my first stop for gas the interact system was not working for half the banks, and I hopped from station to station until I found one taking electronic payment. I fueled up, relieved my bladder, grabbed enough cash from the ATM for a tank of fuel, had a minor heart attack at the price of gas this trip, and got back on the TransCanada highway munching on crackers with chunks of ham and cheese. Feeling hopeful and positive I had the brilliant idea to gift the tickets I had to a Van Gogh experience to a lovely friend who really would get more then just a look at the art from it. The tickets were a birthday present from my husband and this little glitch of Mom’s pneumonia meant they would go to waste otherwise and I knew something good would come of her taking her daughter. Then the dashboard started lighting up like an evil jack o lantern.

 

First a couple of lights that might just mean a computer reset was in order or it spelled out doom and danger and dollars lots of dollars. I was in the middle of no where, past the point of turning back and late afternoon on a Friday. Trying not to panic I kept going as everything felt fine still and I was pretty comfortable driving the next 3 hours or so to my planned first stop. I had a hotel room and knew the area. For a woman alone on the road it would be safe.

Well one more stop for gas was in order so I did not arrive on fumes or get stuck in the middle of even more no where out of gas and that was when the other lights started to turn up. The computer did not reset, my worst fears came true, and the sensor was blown again. Not a huge deal a couple hundred dollars and an hour should take care of it BUT if I stopped anywhere not level the car could shut off and not restart until it was replaced as this sensor was linked to my ABS brakes, my traction control and my 4WD. I pushed on and got to my hotel that did not notice the late check in note and there was no room at the inn, and a big show at the local casino, and I had no idea if the car would start again – told you big price the universe wanted. Found a room at another motel, called a friend and had a freak out, ordered a pizza, started googling garages to no avail. Nothing was going to be open until Monday morning and with my luck they would all be booked solid. Saturday and Sunday were spent pacing and sleeping too much with a quick call to Mom in the hospital. The nurse assured me that they would not release her until I got there but mostly because she should no longer be living alone and that opened up a whole new world of thoughts in my head.

 

Monday morning, I found someplace first thing and they were great. They also found that my struts were rusted out and the mounts corroded meaning one pothole could have blown a hole through my car and left me dead or dying by the side of the road somewhere. Twelve hundred dollars and 3 hours later I was back on the road again. My cell phone was not picking up any service, I was alone unless I stopped to text as for some reason that still worked and two days behind schedule. I just kept driving. I stopped at a rest stop in Quebec and the coke machine was busted. I am a coke girl, it was so hot under glass in the sun of my travelling fish bowl and I was on my last ounce of mental fortitude. I was ready to admit defeat when the vendor arrived to fill the machines and with his little English and my worse high school French we had a brief animated chat that ended with him handing me a coke and his best wishes like a coca cola commercial come to life. Google maps all set up I headed back out to the highway.

 

Google maps lies, she is a bitch and she lies. I know I set it up for the toll bypass of Montreal and yet there is the only exit for it on my right 4 lanes over and now behind me with a dead stop and accident looming in front. I zipped over to the next exit before I was trapped and sat in an industrial park arguing with google maps. Back to it on my alternate route with it memorized this time and ignoring half the direction from google bitch I looped in and out of the old route practicing what I would say to US border agents if I ended up in New York. Luckily that was not necessary as I would likely still be in a holding cell if I had. The Ontario border crossed and fuel in my tank again along with a Timmies coffee in my hand I contacted the mother-in-law who lived 4 hours shy of my final destination. I considered pushing through to home, Toronto would be easier in the middle of the night, but I am not 20 as my body continually reminds me. I was still only almost healed from a blown right rotator cuff and my left shoulder was screaming at me in sympathy but never received any treatment as I had to rush out the door when I did.

 

It would have been 9 or 10 pm when I arrived, the time change it turns out was still in affect I was not over the QC/ON border only close. The weather alert was not snow and would likely miss me as I was travelling too. The signs along the highway all read clear sailing to each exit and google bitch was being quiet. Once again feeling the worst was over – not a good idea. Delays started popping up on the signs, 15 mins, 20 mins, 29 mins at exit 6 something or other. Google maps started trying to take me down an alternate route in the approaching dark into the wilds of nowhere which did not go well last time. So there I sat, in my SUV, in the approaching dark, with at least 200 tractor trailers stopped dead or creeping forward a few inches at a time. My delay getting longer and longer with each passing minute and the temperature doing odd things with sudden change from hot to cold then large intermittent drops of rain splattering the dust on my windshield. This is when I realize I never did replace the worn windshield wipers and the lightening flashed. Doom, I felt doom, but the single lane closure was over, and the highway opened up just as the skies did and a biblical torrent of rain and darkness erased everything but the taillights of 200 trucks.

 

Locked on to the taillights in front of me a headed from Kingston to Belleville. It is only 80 km to my turn off and then another 20 minutes of dark back country highway. I am already horribly late and not able to travel at full highway speeds with no sign of my biblical storm passing. Thankfully the rain stops at my turn off and google maps is no longer trying to kill or misdirect me, so I pull into my mother-in-law’s driveway in one piece. After a turkey sandwich and bending her poor ears I send her off to bed even though I am so wired for sound that I feel I will never sleep. I message some friends and vent a little and eventually sleep.

 

It is morning and I need to decide whether I creep out without waking her or wait for her to wake up. It is only 4 more hours to the end of this trip, so I wait. I have some breakfast and head on out the door only the have my guts start to churn in a foreboding manner. I make it to the main highway, fill the car, and commit an act in the gas station bathroom that deserved an apology note. Tim Horton’s and TransCanada with no more google maps required to the end in my sights. I few more frustrating and emotional moments but all in all it was not so bad from here on in.

 

It is not really the end it is truly the beginning of a long, long summer.