Whistle-Stopping
After two weeks of too much travel, I spent Saturday at my mom’s place near Toledo. Over the last few years, I’ve been fortunate in being able to tack a visit home onto a business trip to the midwest. Indeed, these trips became almost routine, and I believe I’ve popped in more often than I might have if I had lived across town.
This was the first such visit, however, since my dad died in October, and it was strange not to have him greet me at the back door when I came dragging my bags in. Since October, I in many ways just went back to the parallel “me” life in Seattle to the “their” life in Toledo that has existed over the 30 years we’ve been out here, and I’d catch myself seeing something or reading something in the paper and thinking, “Dad’ll get a kick out of that - I’ll email it to him.”
Being there last weekend was a way to see that life has rotated a few degrees on its axis, my mom taking entire responsibility for the house and financial affairs, making incremental changes in the daily routine. I set up an Excel worksheet and she and I worked through a monthly budget, trying to list all the expenses she and I could think of, matching against her income, seeing how things shake out. She’ll have enough left over to travel to pester her sons, go out with friends for bridge, plays, etc.
We went out Saturday and purchased an artificial Christmas tree, did some other shopping and had lunch at Chili’s. I strung lights on the shrubbery outside, assembled the tree, and we decorated it, sort of prosaic activities that seemed convivial and festive. We took the dog for a long walk, and later made a reservation for her to visit her brother in Phoenix, a startlingly spontaneous thing to do when compared to the level of politicking she’d had to employ to maneuver my dad into a trip, especially to see HER relatives 
My plane left Detroit for Seattle early Sunday morning, just beating some of the nasty cold that enveloped the eastern half of the country this week. I wish this picture was a little clearer - this guy on the DTW ground crew had a Freddy Krueger-like mask on his face, and, with his light sabres in hand, looked like a minion of the Dark Side.
