Where oh where are they now?

We did not go to Mexico ... damn! 

After a fantastic feast (hosted by cousins Dave and D'Anne LeBon) with 20 family members at the Laguna Nigel Country Club we returned to my Aunt Gay's place high on a ridge overlooking the famous art colony of Laguna Beach with Catalina so close it felt as though one could almost touch it. We were supposed to host a lunch on the 27th to celebrate my 68th birthday but during the night Jill got very sick and I began to feel lousy also ... so... we canceled the lunch and the trip to Mexico with our friends Don and Kerri Jo and came back to Palm Desert. We got El Gato out of storage and are now recovering in the Shadow Hills RV Resort.


Rather than bore you with our persistent maladies I thought I'd post a brief observation my daughter Leslie had last week when, after Thanksgiving at her mother's, she caught a plane to NY out of the small airport in Watertown South Dakota. Her writing often makes me want to shred mine. She is not only a talented writer, she's beautiful, a successful international business woman, can muck out a barn with alacrity, a grandmother of two and mother to nine. Eat your heart out Martha Stewart!

Its cold, ok not subzero but its cold and dark. Two ingredients that don't mix real well with me. Now I'm cold. It was just after 5a when I arrived at the airport. I was the second person thru the door, just after Cecil, the morning desk attendant. I recognized him from the years when this was my airport. He didn't know me anymore.

Things change. 

The whole airport is under construction. The men's bathroom had become unisex...even tho there was a door on the stall, I didn't know if I should shut the main door. There was a couch and a urinal. I eyed it with curiosity. Do men take turns or is it acceptable to share the urinal? It smelled clean, overwhelmingly clean and everything was coated with a fine layer of construction dust.

The person before me in the security line was a novice traveler. Her bags had to be re-X-rayed multiple times. So I waited, wondering how many years I have actually stood in a security line, how many moments of my life have been spent here? There is no carpet, its cold outside. I'm standing on bare concrete in my socks. My shoes are in the tub, waiting to be X-rayed.  My feet are getting cold. The TSA agent in charge of putting bags into the X-ray machine leaves his post to manually search her bag. He asks if I would do his job while he is away. I can do it as well as he can. I wonder how much money he makes. The X-ray belt reverses and I adeptly catch a bag and then send it thru when the belt direction changes. I can't feel my toes anymore.

Once thru we're herded into a small makeshift waiting room that is very warm. I'm happy to stay there, contemplating living my life in this warm room, never leaving. Paradise in the dim, panel covered room filled with terrorist and H1N1 warnings is short lived.  I prepare to show my boarding pass again to an armed agent as we exit the building and walk across the frozen tarmac. The makeshift exit has no light. He seriously studies my boarding pass (it could have changed since the last TSA agent looked at it, 20 feet before). Its dark. I tell him he should have a flashlight. He thanks me for the good idea. His white teeth flash in the predawn darkness.

I load my carry-on bag onto a cart supervised by Cecil, now dressed in a parka adorned with reflective strips. I tell him goodbye and board the plane...just like I used to do for many years. Its easy to slip into the old routine only he doesn't remember me anymore.