We’re home at last. The house is a mess. So it goes: I have a clean-up task to do for the beginning of the year, which should start it out just right.
Meanwhile, 2008 retrospectives seem to be the order of the day.
I had a son.
It’s possible I will never do anything so awesome for the rest of my life — and I can live with that.
Happy New Year’s!
Kazuyoshi Hobbes, age 2 days.
Today was our last day in Seattle for the winter holidays. Tomorrow morning we head back to California, just in time for the close of the year and the beginning of 2009. It’ll be sad to leave, as usual — I continue to feel like Seattle is home, though I have the same feeling about Sunnyvale so going in either direction I feel the yank and tear of separation — and I know Mom will miss us. By “us” I mean “the baby,” who is easily her favorite Hirata so far. So it goes. So it should be, I suppose, and I certainly have no objection; the kid is infuriatingly endearing, and I grimly predict that in future years he will be able to get away with murder. He’s certainly bonded with his grandmother, who the Guy told me was a Jedi.
It’s true that my mom has an uncanny ability to get Hobbes to sleep, when the rest of us fail utterly. She exerts some sort of queer hypnotic force over the infant.
Miroku mochi
Later on, when there’s no need for the mochi offering anymore, they’re broken up into smaller pieces and deep-fried. Sprayed lightly with soy sauce, they’re fantastic: crisp crackers that are, admittedly, a bit tough on the teeth but damned good.
Mochigome set out to dry
In the old days, we used to do this with wooden hammers and hollowed out barrels. Nowadays we do it with machines. There was an atavistic charm to doing it that way, though it was backbreaking work from what I could see; I was too young to participate, being only about 7 or 8 years old, but I remember running around quite happily while the adults labored all day over the steaming and pounding.
Mom making mochi
Poor American palates. You miss out on so much good shit.
Karashi mentaiko (spicy fish roe), shiso and nori mochi.
Sako, Mom, Hobbes and me
And since our last entry was about the past generations, here’s a palate-cleanser with the future one.
Home boy Hobbes and his daddy.
We picked up a scanner a few days ago at Fry’s during one of our traditional holiday Fry’s runs — hey, you have your traditions and we have ours — and I have been spending my evenings over the last few days going through our family’s old photo albums and scanning anything of interest. I mentioned that already, but I mention it again as a preface to the point of this story. My mother, bemused and amused by my sudden passion for family history, produced a small black and white photograph last night and handed it to me with the preface, “This is your great-grandfather.”
Great-grandfather translated to my mother’s father, which was timely since I was just then going through a photo album my mother had apparently put together during her teenage years. I was in the process of scanning them and asking my mother questions about identity and relationships anyway; here was just one more to add to the mix.
I’ve asked for family stories before, and in the main my mother hasn’t said all that much about her grandfather. The things she does say are suitably respectful given his age and her generation, basically boiling down to variations on: “He was a remarkable man.” While remarkable can mean a lot of things in English, both positive and negative, in Japanese it’s not quite so shades-of-grey. Subarashii is the word she used, which translates more accurately to “magnificent.”
Great-grandfather Lieutenant General Morito Hirabayashi
“What was his name?” I asked, because stories about relatives tend to be on a basis of “Your great-grandfather did–” when brought up at all, nameless and empty of identifiers save for titular recommendation.
“Chujo Hirabayashi,” she said.
I started to write that down.
“Chujo,” she said slowly, “is … something under general.”
Oh. It was a title. My Japanese vocabulary is sort of lacking.
It was my sister who figured it out, predictably through google. We identified his title as Lieutenant General, and when we googled his actual name — Morito Hirabayashi, my mom produced after a while — we were able to find him on wikipedia, among other things. He was Chief Military Advisor in Manchukuo in 1937, among other things.
“He had such strict principles,” my mom said. “He had a strong opinion of right and wrong. He opposed his general on the war.”
Still … Chief Military Advisor. Without knowing the details, this is like finding out your great-grandfather consulted on the building of Auschwitz. It’s hard to tell how much he knew, if anything — did he? didn’t he? — but one way or another, even if it’s only through ignorance, his hands weren’t clean. On the one hand, the stories that my mom has told me about him suggest that he really was a highly principled man who followed as his ethics took him, even to the point of going to jail during the war. On the other hand, Manchukuo.
More research is in order.
Yoshihiko Hirata, aka Dad. Pre-Mom.
My mother doesn’t care for those photographs.
I’ve found pictures of him in military uniform, which is both amusing and disturbing; his military career in the US Army is a thing of jest rather than something taken seriously. He told us that he won a medal for building a bowling alley in Korea, which could very well be the bare truth: he was, after all, a skilled carpenter. On the other hand, the Guy has pointed out that this is the sort of thing a man might want to tell his young daughters if there are less savory truths he would rather not share.
We’ve submitted a request to the veteran archives for information about his military record. Among other things, I’m curious to know if mom’s idea that he eventually deserted has any truth to it.
Meanwhile, another peculiar and interesting discovery: a letter sent to him on the occasion of his departure to the United States from Japan.
HEADQUARTERS
704th MILITARY INTELLIGENCE DETACHMENTUSARJ SPO-MID
SUBJECT: Letter of Appreciation5 February 1970
Mr. Yoshihiko Hirata
3-6-3 Mejiro
Toshima-ku, Tokyo
JapanUpon your departure from Japan for the United States, I wish to express to you this unit’s appreciation for a job well done during your assignment to the Tokyo Field Office, this detachment, during the period 2 July to 17 October 1969. Although new to intelligence operations and procedures, you quickly became proficient and contributed greatly to the accomplishment of the detachment mission in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Your willingness to work long hours at tedious, detailed tasks is exemplary and stands as an outstanding example to all members of the unit.
I would consider myself fortunate to have you assigned again as a member of this unit. Our best wishes and hopes for a successful career in the United States go with you.
Sincerely yours,
Lester H. Dacus
Maj, MI
Commanding
Yet another chapter in my father’s life I never knew anything about.
It’s bittersweet, to learn things about your father after he is dead. When he was alive, I thought I had all the time in the world.
We took advantage of the melting snow to go on one long-promised visit. Mrs. M. has been a member of the Seattle Mahikari Dojo for as long as I can remember, and when Sako and I were small used to spoil us hopelessly. Almost all of the ladies at the dojo did, for that matter, and the men too; we were singularly lucky in how much attention and care we got from the adults around us. Of course, the unfortunate side effect was that I grew up to be a total brat, the kind that by rights should be found abandoned at roadside attractions — but so it goes. She was a sweet, happy, charming woman and one of the cutest little old ladies I have ever known.
She’s almost 90 now, separated by a year from my own grandmother in Japan. Unfortunately, old age has done a number on her, and she’s no longer able to live on her own. We went to visit her in her retirement community in Renton, where we found her somewhat bed-ridden in an overheated room. She was pretty much exactly as I remembered her: plump-cheeked, bright-eyed, as happy and loving as ever. The roses in her cheeks had faded a bit, and her memory wasn’t what it was — she had to be reminded of my name, for instance — but she was still there.
Walking through the retirement community, we were greeted by happy smiles on all sides. Not from any particular virtue in the community itself, though the building seemed nice enough and the staff were competent and civil. It was that weird magic that small babies exude, giving them a free pass into everyone’s hearts. Hobbes bobbed his head and looked around him with solemn interest, befriending everybody he saw simply by being a contented, amiable baby.
He smiled at Mrs. M and made her day.
And then we strapped him into his car seat and he screamed all the way home.
We’ve been spending the day scanning photographs from old picture albums before they get too degraded, part of my ongoing and desultory effort to record our family history before it’s lost.
We were scanning an album of photographs from 1972, the year my parents married — the year before I was born — and came across this one of my mother.
It’s always a shock to discover your parents had lives before you, though I already knew my mom was a babe.
Still, you know.
A babe.
Sadly, I took after the other side of the family.
“I love the kid so much,” I confessed awkwardly to my mother. We are Japanese. We do not talk about loving our children. “I have a hard time imagining if I have another kid I will be able to love it as much.”
“Mm,” said Mom. She was drying dishes; I was washing. “Babies are so cute,” she said meditatively, and put away a cup. “And they are very lovable. But then they start growing up, and they start to say bad things to their parents, and do things they were told not to do, and be very disobedient and very troublesome. And then you think, ‘I liked baby best,’ so you think you will have another, and start all over. Because babies are so cute.”
“Heh,” I said, and then thought about what she said.
Oldest child: me. Youngest child: Sako.
“…Wait,” I said. “What?”
From Sako (Mobile)
Dec 25, 2008 11:34:54 AM
Callback Number: Sako (Mobile)
———————————
I just dropped my boarding pass into the toilet…pre flush
Sako flew into town for Christmas, which makes this a full house for the holidays. Barring her boyfriend, John, we are all now gathered into the Hirata family house in time for Christmas day dinner — roast chicken with gravy, Japanese sweet potato, broccoli, salad and rolls — which by new tradition is cooked by the Guy and served up before 6 pm. Even with all of us in the house, it’s a sparse gathering: four adults, one child. We’re a small family. It gives me a pang every so often to hear from my aunt up the hill, whose family runs to five grown sons with at least a dozen grandchildren and assorted appendages for each.
As if to make up for that, our one small child spent the evening making enough noise for two dozen grandchildren, all throwing temper tantrums, so I got over that pretty quick.
Note the timestamp on the text message above. Sako’s flight left at 11:45 AM. She was able to catch it on time; she told us later that she asked for a new boarding pass from the ticket desk. It turns out that the accident she suffered is apparently not as uncommon as you’d think, from the reaction of the airline representatives — although maybe they were just numb at that point from dealing with all the miseries of snowpocalypse.
We didn’t do Christmas presents this year by agreement with my sister, which means that we didn’t come with anything for her or my mother, but that Sako came up with presents from REI for all of us. She’s bad at keeping her end of these kinds of deals, which is okay; it’s a typical family flaw, and it’s only chance that for a rare change, I decided to keep my end of the bargain.
“It’s not from me, it’s from John,” she said hastily, when I accused her of cheating. Innate honesty then compelled her to add, “Well, no. Not really.”
She gave the Guy a beautifully warm pullover and me a jacket/sweater that consists of some sort of shaggy blue material. It makes me look like Grover’s Japanese cousin, and is wonderfully warm and fuzzy. My occasional resemblance to a muppet seems like a small price to pay, given the current weather. (Rainy with a chance of sudden ice age.)
“I didn’t get anything for her,” Mom whispered to me in a quiet moment, looking chagrined. She’ll make up for it somehow during the coming year, possibly by stealthily slipping a lot of cash she can’t afford into Sako’s bags. It’s her way. Me, I figure I’m still above par: last year, the Guy and I gave Sako a Macbook.
Meanwhile, nice though the gift was, the best gift came from little Hobbes. Stranded all alone with Hobbes once more while the Guy and Mom went to pick up Sako at the airport — “You can’t come. It’s too dangerous, and someone needs to stay with the baby.” “Fine.” — I did who-knows-what with him, some idiotic face, maybe, and he laughed.
For the very first time.
It was beautiful.
Merry Christmas.
Mom was whispering to Hobbes, who was listening with great interest.
“…to me if your mother gives you a hard time,” she was saying confidentially in Japanese. “I will tell you stories about her….”
“Mom.”
She stopped whispering and smiled innocently at me. Hobbes stared at her, no doubt studying the mechanics of perfidy from the resident master.
“I was just talking,” she said. “To my grandson. It is private. Between us.”
Hobbes gave her a great, goofy grin.
Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill, unless they team up and totally screw over middle-aged and persevering.
Part of our Christmas tradition since the Guy came on the scene has been that he cooks at least once or twice. There is something to be said for variety, and after all a family vacation should mean that even Mom gets a vacation from the stove and the clean-up, though she obsessively follows our own attempts at tidying up with her own thorough sweep of the vicinity. However hard we try, we cannot quite satisfy her demanding standards when it comes to sanitation.
During the week he took care of Hobbes all by himself, the Guy also took on the domestic chore of cooking dinner, thereby picking up some of the burden I took over while I was at home alone with the baby. He has a more creative bent than I do, or had more energy than I had near the end of my tenure as a stay-at-home mom. By the end of my three months, I’d been reduced to slapping together meals based on calorie count and nutritional value, with very little interest in taste or suitability. 1 serving of protein + 1 serving of starch + 1 serving of vegetable = 1 meal.
It was about as inspiring as concrete.
The Guy, on the other hand, took on the challenge of dinners with vim and vigor. The wok, one of those kitchen devices that I avoid whenever possible, was brought down from the overhead rack and put in a permanent place of honor on the stovetop. He went into an orgy of Chinese cooking that inspired cheers and accolades from the baby and myself. One of those recipes is ma po tofu, which in Japanese ends up sounding like “Mah-boh-doh-fu.” I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to be pronounced. It’s a Szechuan recipe, basically combining chilis and tofu and ground pork, which are then poured over rice.
It is good. It is probably really really unhealthy, but I would never diss Chinese culture by saying so. Because it is damn good.
I am informed by the internet that the name means ‘pockmarked grandmother beancurd.’ I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a description of the dish, or the person who invented it. Both are believable.
recipe for mapo tofu
1.5 Tbsp corn starch
2 Tbsp soy sauce
Quarter pound ground pork
Mix together starch and soy sauce and marinate pork in it for 30 minutes.
1 pound regular tofu (medium firmness)
1 leek or 3 green onions
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp Chinese salted black beans (fermented black beans, also called Chinese black beans), or to taste
1 Tbsp chili bean paste, or to taste
3 Tbsp stock (chicken broth)
1 Tbsp cornstarch
2 Tbsp water
2 Tbsp light soy sauce
Freshly ground Szechuan pepper
2 – 3 tablespoons oil for stir-frying, as needed
Cut the tofu (bean curd) into 1/2 inch (1 cm) square cubes, and blanch (drop into boiling water) for 2 – 3 minutes. Remove from boiling water and drain.
Chop leek or green onions into short lengths.
Heat wok and add oil. When oil is ready, add the marinated pork. Stir-fry pork until the color darkens. Add salt and stir. Add the salted black beans. Mash the beans with a cooking ladle until they blend in well with the meat. Add the chili paste, then the stock, bean curd, and leek or green onions.
Turn down the heat. Cook for 3 – 4 minutes.
While cooking, mix cornstarch, water, and soy sauce together. Add to wok and stir gently. Serve with freshly ground Szechuan pepper.
My mother, bless her heart, is having a hard time adjusting to the conflict between grandmotherly doting and traditional Japanese strictness. Add to that her avowed policy of “Thou shalt not interfere,” an impossible motto at best given her innate inability to let something that needs correction simply go without a quiet word, and you will understand why she is finding our visit full of disconcerting discoveries.
Last night after the baby had gone to sleep, we were sitting down in the living room doing our assorted activities, when I heard a thin wail from upstairs.
“Oh bother,” I said. My expletives lately have been drawn from Winnie-the-Pooh books.
The Guy glanced up from his computer. “Should I go up?”
He didn’t bother to wait for my answer; he disappeared up the stairs, while my mother made a small clucking sound and shook her head sagely. “You should let him cry a little,” she said reprovingly.
She is of the opinion that crying improves chest strength, which could very well be the truth. I have no problem with letting him cry a bit, but. “It’s hard to hear from upstairs,” I said. “Who knows how long he’s been crying? It’s just a good idea to check on him.”
She subsided, looking doubtful, but in a gentle and unencroaching way that said, ‘You are wrong but he is your child and I never interfere.‘
She disappeared into the kitchen after that, and a few minutes later, the Guy came back downstairs to report, “He’s being a little brat.” I could hear the baby crying again upstairs. “I’m going to let him cry for about ten minutes and see if he can calm himself down.”
“Okay,” I said, and he disappeared upstairs again.
Five minutes later, my mother popped out of the kitchen, looking anxious. “Yuhri,” she said in that way of hers. Yuuuuuuuhri. “He’s still crying.”
“Yup,” I said.
“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”
“Yup.”
She paused, her head tilted to listen. Her expression of anxiety deepened. “Are you sure?” she asked. “He sounds very upset. Maybe he is hurt. Maybe his stomach is hurting.”
I squinted at her. “He’s fine,” I told her airily. “He’s just mad about not being asleep.”
There was another pause, filled by the thin sound of the baby wailing his rage upstairs.
In a hushed voice, she asked, “Does he always cry like this?”
“Yup,” I said.
She hunched her shoulders up, hovered indecisively for a moment, then disappeared back into the kitchen again. Her head was shaking as she went.
Stern principles are just fine until they come face to face with the bawling reality.
On the up side, Hobbes adores his grandmother. The feeling appears to be mutual.
Food porn it ain’t, but one of the best things about coming home to Mom’s house is the Japanese cooking. And not your on-the-menu-so-gaijin-will-pay-for-it cooking, but real Japanese cooking, the authentic kind that gets served up in the house if you’re a pre-war Japanese person living on a rice farm in Nagano prefecture.
This is how our stomachs roll in Seattle, ladies and gents.
Recipe for nabemono
Hot water
dashi kobu (seaweed)
boil for a while.
Add various ingredients.
Suggestions:
Let simmer for a while in hot pot of your choice. Make a sauce of soy sauce and brown rice vinegar mixed together in about a 1:1 ratio. Add a dash of balsamic vinegar.
Grate a daikon (Japanese white radish) and finely cut some green onions. Put a few spoonfuls of the daikon and a sprinkling of the green onion into a bowl. Serve up some of the nabemono. Add sauce to flavor, and eat.
It’s a beautiful thing, when you don’t have to travel through it.
The snow is lovely from inside the very warm venue of my mother’s house. The power isn’t out, which is a mercy for pretty much everyone in Seattle and Bellevue right now. While my mom has a pile of wood in the backyard and a surprisingly effective wood-burning stove in the living room, there are a lot of things I’d rather do than spend Christmas without power, no matter how charmingly old-fashioned the heating mechanism is. For one thing, if there’s no power, I can’t use my computer.
We won’t go into all the ways that would suck.
According to my mother, it’s actually warmer today than it was yesterday, which was in turn warmer than it was the day before. It’s been my experience that snow actually tends to make things warmer, so I had no problem believing it, though rational thought sort of stopped at the concept of it actually being colder than it was last night. Then again, I’d spent two hours outside in totally inadequate clothes, waiting to get a taxi — so it’s possible my perception of the weather wasn’t quite on par with the reality. By comparison with yesterday, today was practically balmy. My mom and the Guy went on a two mile hike to the shopping center to buy groceries while I napped at home with the baby.
I love vacations. Once I get to them, that is.
It is not only Hobbes’s first Christmas, it is his first snow experience as well. We took him out into the world to tramp around a bit — again in the Guy’s coat, since his is the warmest outfit we have. The baby took it all in good grace, for all the strangeness of it. He is, I have discovered, philosophically resigned to most of the things we inflict on him. He doesn’t smile all that often, which makes him look more stoic than he probably is.
Which isn’t to say he can’t be seen to enjoy himself, once in a while.
This will not number among my favorable holiday travel memories of all time.
“There’s a storm coming,” said Mom over the phone, sounding skeptical about the forecast as she always does when it does not suit her personal preferences. “They say there will be snow.”
“Snow,” I said. “In Seattle.”
“I do not think it will be important,” she said, and added reproachfully, “You did not listen to my message I left on your answering machine. You do not need to bring the video camera. I do not need it. Because of the storm.”
“Right,” I said. “I’ll tell the Guy.”
“Will you be able to come?” she asked.
“Our plane’s at 7:50,” I said. “Today. As far as I know, we’ll be there.” In the normal course of things, a flight from San Jose to Seattle takes between an hour 45 minutes and two hours.
“I hope so,” she said sadly. I fully expected her to add, “I am going to die soon and would like to see my grandson one last time,” but she didn’t. The woman is as healthy as a horse and anyway, the imminent death reproach was implicit in the small sigh she gave before she hung up.
In the background, I’d been dimly aware of the Guy answering my cell phone as I wrapped up my conversation with Mom. He came out of the kitchen and thrust it at me; the caller was an automated system. Congratulations, was the gist. Your flight has been canceled due to a winter storm in Seattle. If you would like to book tickets on a different flight, please contact our sales associates at this number. Thank you for flying Alaska.
“Well, shit,” I said.
The Guy kindly stayed mum.
I immediately called Alaska air on one phone — 25 minute wait, the automated voice told me nicely, and then proceeded to barrage me with modern arrangements of old Christmas carols in a grim sort of festivity that bludgeoned me with holiday cheer — and called around to update my mother and sister on the other. 25 minutes, it turned out, was an optimistic estimate. I put the phone on speaker and filled the living room with saccharine music while I played with the baby. 35 minutes later, an agent came on.
She was warily nice. I imagine she had to deal with a lot of angry customers before me; when I did not immediately suffer a nervous breakdown on the phone, she warmed up rapidly. I explained our situation to her and asked if she could find an alternate way to get to Seattle for us. “Oh, the storm,” she said sympathetically. A few seconds of tapping away in her computer produced, “How soon can you get to the airport? Because I see one leaving at 5 pm.”
I glanced at the clock. We hadn’t packed yet. “And there’s room on it?” My voice rose a little towards the hysterical range.
“It might still get canceled,” she warned. “It’s on marginal status while they figure out what to do. If the weather gets too bad in Seattle, it might be called off. But if you can get there–”
“We’ll make it,” I said. I think, I added to myself.
“I’ll book you in,” she said. “Hurry, hurry hurry!”
I might have thanked her before I hung up. I vaguely think I said something along the lines of Crap at her, but I can’t be positive about that.
The next 45 minutes are a bit of a blur. Somewhere in there, the Guy called the cab company for me; I whipped through the house like a whirlwind, sowing chaos and catastrophe wherever I went. Important point: I had my list. I ran down the items on it one by one, hurling stuff into suitcases and diaper bag and pausing every so often to bark contradictory orders at the Guy, most of which he stolidly ignored. It was a mind-numbing 45 minutes, one that I recommend no parent of a 3-month old ever put themselves through — but at the end of it, we were ready. The taxi rolled up. We were packed and good to go.
“There’s probably, like, 2 inches of snow on the roads,” I said dismissively on the way to the airport. “Seattle freaks out at snow. They don’t have experience. It’s probably nothing.”
Hah. Haha.
San Jose airport was surprisingly empty, considering the holiday travel expectations that I had. The airline representative who checked us in was apologetic and warned us again about the possibility that the flight might be canceled. “It’s so weird,” I said. “It never snows in Seattle. I mean, not that bad.”
“I know,” she said, and I had the impression she would have reached across the counter and clutched at me if she were allowed. I suspect she’d had a lot of angry passengers pass her counter in the past hour or so. “I never thought about snow in Seattle until I took this job. I didn’t even think it knew how.”
“You’ll want to be at the gate around 4:30,” she told us as we collected our stuff and finished check-in. “We’ll know by then whether we’ll be able to leave at all.”
We went to the gate. Around us, the conversation revolved around the weather at Seattle; people were on phones with family in Washington, and would regularly update the waiting crowd. “It’s snowing.” “It’s down to 30 degrees.” “My husband says the roads are fine.” “My cousin says that there’s two feet of snow outside.”
“They’ll cancel the flight.”
“They won’t cancel the flight.”
We stopped listening.
There was a stir when the same air attendant from earlier took the podium. She announced pre-boarding for those with young children and those who needed extra time to get on board. There was no caveat about the weather in Seattle, which we took to be a good sign. “It can’t be that bad,” I said, and scooted for the gate with my small entourage.
It was nice being one of the select few who get to board early. Unfortunately, we discovered as we struggled to get to our seats, it wasn’t a privilege. It was a necessity.
Hobbes started getting bored before the rest of the passengers managed to get on board.
Brilliant.
We were all on board and the doors were closed, and we had started heading for the tarmac. Then we stopped. We were stopped for a long time.
“Bugger,” I said.
The captain came on to the intercom to announce that we had too much fuel on board and that we would have to burn some off by going in circles on the runway for a while. There was a stir; Hobbes, who had been relatively tolerant through the interminable process of waiting and boarding, started to get a little cranky. The Guy leaned over to me.
“Do you suppose the pilots are trying to procrastinate long enough so they don’t have to go to Seattle?” he asked, and snickered a little.
I plugged the baby onto one of my breasts and bit my tongue.
We finally took off. “Yay,” I said. “Guh,” said the baby.
I will draw a curtain over the subsequent two hours. We took turns entertaining Hobbes, who seemed to find the whole adventure of airline travel not particularly worth his while, but maintained a critical silence through most of it.
The weather in Seattle, while it may have been trivial for someplace like, say, Chicago, was not trivial at all. The winds were whipping up a storm when we finally landed; for a long time before that, we were pinned to the window, staring outside at daggers of ice being smashed against the plane’s wing lights. The pilot got well-deserved applause for a bumpy landing. “I bet he had a butt-clenching moment there,” commented the Guy.
The steward came on the intercom to tell us that we would have to wait for a little while so they could free up a gate for us. Due to the weather and a lot of canceled flights, there were airplanes all over, hogging up the gates. (He didn’t phrase it like that.) “We’ll have to park at the south terminal,” he said apologetically, for all the planeload of passengers had been surprisingly cordial and understanding throughout the course of the flight. “It will just be a few minutes while they clear the way for us.”
We pulled into the gate.
They opened the doors to let us out. We were at the back of the plane, which I had no problem with, considering how fortunate we were even to get onto the plane at all. As a result though, it was another 10 minutes before we were even able to stand up, much less leave. By that time, Hobbes was ready to rip our heads off with his own wee hands. “Watch out for the ramp,” said the steward on our way out. “It’s a little slippery.”
It wasn’t only a little slippery; the cold was in full strength and dove right through our clothes in search of bone marrow. “Holy sh–,” I said, finishing up lamely, “–ivers.”
I’m still learning to moderate my language around the baby.
Our first stop was to the bathroom, where I changed his diaper and redressed him in a shaggy blue bear outfit that seemed warm enough to cut a little of the cold, at least. He calmed down long enough to give me a reproachful stare, then proceeded to work on drooling his way out of the outfit.
We went in search of our luggage.
Someone was finally able to direct us to where our luggage would be coming out.
Our luggage finally came out.
In search of a taxi, we discovered a line outside that curled all the way around the lot. This time I did’t bother to moderate my language at all. “#*%&,” I said. An airport worker who was helping direct the line paused to take in the small, dozing baby curled up in the Guy’s chest.
“It’s a little cold out here,” she said, in one of those thoughtless understatements that start fights. The wind was what I’ve read somewhere as a “lazy wind,” which means it doesn’t bother to go around people; it just goes right through. I clenched my teeth to keep them from rattling.
“Urg,” I said.
“You might want to have one of you stand in line while the other stays in line,” she suggested, not unkindly. “For the baby’s sake.”
It was a good idea. The Guy went back inside the warm, warm terminal, while I got in line.
Here is what I learned during the course of the two hours I spent in line.
I called the Guy back out into the cold a little too soon, thinking it would be about ten minutes until we got to the head of the line. It was actually another 15, though the baby was bundled up so tightly under the Guy’s jacket that he was sound asleep: the most comfortable person in the line, in fact. His presence made me the target of a fresh spate of sympathy from people who were just as cold as I was.
All the sympathy I was getting before that was because I was wee.
The taxi driver informed us that he probably wouldn’t be able to take us all the way to my mom’s house. “Not if there are hills,” he said stridently, preempting argument by talking louder from the outset. “I do not want to be blamed if there are hills. If I get stuck, it is $200 to be towed. The snow is too bad. No.”
“Fine,” I said. “Just take us as far as you can.”
“I charge you each $70,” he announced loudly.
The baby started to cry.
The taxi driver was actually able to take us within three blocks of my mother’s house, making a special effort through unplowed streets. He disgorged us on a corner; the $70 that seemed exorbitant at the time seemed more than reasonable by the time we tumbled out onto into snow drifts that swallowed me up almost to the knee. The baby, once again, proved to be the key to charming a cranky person into good humor; he was practically bleeding sympathy and concern by the time he finished unloading our furniture.
I heard him mumbling about small children as he climbed back into his taxi to deliver his other passenger. “We’ll be fine,” the Guy told him, cheerfully enough. “She’s right nearby.” I was already on the phone to my mother to tell her where we’d been dropped off. She made fussy noises at me over the phone and said she was coming out to meet us.
We began to walk, Hobbes completely invisible under the Guy’s jacket. He looked pregnant. The baby made not a peep, perfectly content to be sound asleep and warm.
It is not an easy thing, to wade through knee-deep snow with two suitcases, a stroller, a backpack, a car seat, a diaper bag, and a 3 month old.
My mom met us halfway.
Home.
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