What a long, strange trip . . .
My dad arrived here on Monday. Is it ever great to see him. After weeks of my mother's and my breaking out the self-sufficient New England Amazon role (these are Amazons who know how to keep a fire going in the woodstove and lug the wood in all by themselves), I was really kind of done with that. Dad would have helped us get the tree "vegetage" (well, what do you call it when it isn't meat--it's not carnage?) off the lawn, except that it snowed all over it. A lot.
Yesterday, as you might have noticed, was Christmas Eve, and that was the day Dave and Lu and Hannah (aka brother, sister-in-law and baby niece) were going to arrive. Their flight out of the Midwest was scheduled to leave at 11.30 a.m. That was a nice idea.
At the time they were meant to be landing in Boston, they phoned saying they missed their connecting flight in another part of the Midwest, and now had to switch airlines and fly to still another part of the Midwest, where they would get on a flight that would get them to Boston twelve hours after they were meant to have left in the first place.
At 10 p.m. or so, they phoned again saying their plane was having technical difficulties.
Then we started having techical difficulties: the power went out again.
Are you kidding me?!
At 1.30 a.m., the three of us who were here woke up because the power came back on. Phew. The three who were traveling were still traveling . . . and we couldn't get through to them. It was a little hard to get back to sleep, although I guess I must have--pretty deeply, because I didn't hear the three travelers when they finally arrived--at 3.15 a.m.
At 8.00 a.m., someone from Ireland phoned to wish us a happy Christmas. Um . . . thanks? Hannah woke up. Well, we all woke up. Dave and Lu told us that yes, they were here . . . but their luggage had got delayed in the airline switch and was not here with them.
My godly mother said, "This the Christmas from [someplace we could euphemise as 'Hades']!"
"Wow," I said. "I've never heard you describe anything that way, Mom." Not that I disagreed with her.
My godly father said, "We've never had a Christmas like this, either."
Nope. That is true. We haven't. Thank goodness.
3 comments:
I detest stressful holidays that are supposed to be wonderful! Ours has overall been better than yours (poor things), but Dave's engine died and we're trying to figure out if it can be repaired, and for how much, and trying to figure out if we need a new car. Sheesh! Not as relaxing of a holiday (and anniversary) as we had planned either! I hope it goes better for New Years!
I must admit I wish I was there to hear your mom make that comment. I kind of envision a bemused silence afterwards where everyone is pondering the irony of that statement, your mom with a half-smile on her face looking at once sheepish and indignant, followed by a round of laughter. Or maybe, given the circumstances, laughter was out of the question by that point. I hope not, though!
Yeah--you guys sounded like you had a pretty aggravating Christmas, too! Hope you had a better New Year's.
I can imagine the scenario you paint, Dave, but actually, it pretty much went down just the way I described it--with few pauses to register people's facial expressions. My mother was heard reiterating herself at various points in the day, though . . . ;)
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