3:30 AM:
Get up, Margo.
And I do. Nobody is as surprised as me.
Get up, Y. He does, again, shocking us both. We're ready. Our flight is at 6, and we are SO ready. We're ready for a vacation, a break from work - the first I'll have taken since I started full-time and one much needed from his often 16-hour days - and a
trip. Getting away from the every day, getting to Chicago, seeing my family on their turf.
My parents visit pretty often, but we only get to go to Chicago about twice a year. I can't wait to see my grandparents, my friends. To sleep in the house where I grew up, the house where, no matter how old I get, how much my life has changed, I sleep more deeply than anywhere else on earth. I REM when I'm in Chicago.
Everything packed?
Yup.
You remember my shaver?
Mm-hm.
Great. I'll take the suitcases to the curb, you wake the kids.
K. There's the phone. Must be the cab with our 1-mile-away warning.
Perfect.
We missed the flight. The cab was calling to let us know that they didn't have our pre-ordered van, and they'd get us one JUST AS SOON AS THEY CAN. Not good enough, considering the lines at LAX. We go standby all morning, but since Passover begins that evening and we can't be traveling - plane or car - after sundown, the latest American flight we can take leaves at 10:25. We don't get on.
We're incredibly sad. With each flight we don't make, I want to curl up in a ball and cry. Y feels terrible. The kids are well-behaved but incredulous that they aren't going on their trip today. Elan throws his hands up, waving around the airport and exclaims, "There are aiplanes EVERYWHERE! One thousand of them! Not
one of them can take us to Chicago??"
It's the first time I remember actively wishing I was incredibly rich. I'd have a private jet.
I'm depressed because we are shaving three days off the trip we'd been looking forward to all year. Three precious days. And they are special days, holiday days, meant to be spent with my parents.
Ariel is so ready for Passover, has been performing the story in song and recital for any willing audience, and while I know there will be other years, I also know he'll only been exactly this cute in exactly this way
this year.
And then there is my dad. My dad takes Passover so seriously, particularly the part about engaging the children at the
seder.All young kids look forward to hunting for the
afikomen, the portion of the matzah a parent hides for later use, so they can find it and bribe presents out of the adults upon its return.
When my brothers and I were young, my dad would design custom scavenger hunts for the
afikomen each year, one clue leading to the next, each designated for a particular child - personalized with a puzzle only he or she should and could answer. He used these clues to reinforce and remind us of special moments or connections we each had with him, things we had learned with him, and to force the five of us to work independently towards a common goal. They were never simple or insulting to our intelligence, and every year the clues were new and newly-relevant.
The rewards were typically gift certificates to book stores.
My father would also bring insane props - many of which he arts-and-crafted together himself - to illustrate the descriptions of the Ten Plagues. I'm talking paper mache boils on his forearm (over which he'd suddenly cry out in pain), water guns he'd squirt at my two older (twin) brothers for Death of the First-Born, plastic fish floating belly-up in a red-tinted wine glass to symbolize a river flowing with blood (the Passover story is nothing if not goary). Styrofoam lice he'd scratch off his scalp, enormous, life-like rubber locusts he'd toss down the table.
I so wanted my kids to be at his
seder table this year, now that they weren't babies, now that they could sit, wide-eyed and full of attentive laughter, enjoying what I had so much as a child.
It doesn't happen. When we are squeezed off the 10:25, the finality of a day gone wrong weighs heavily on all of us. To make matters worse, our luggage has gone ahead on the 7:05 and we don't even have a toiletry to our name. We re-schedule our flight out for the night after the first days of Passover - the change is fee-free, thanks to my ultimate, exhaustion-induced tantrum before the only Jew-sympathetic agent at American Airlines (I LOVE YOU TRACY!)- and head to Y's parents' for the next couple of days.
The first part of the week is pleasant, if unremarkable, and passes quickly. I rest and read. Y and I talk about how, unlike past airport trips, and despite the emotional turmoil of this one, we didn't fight. How we were on the same page. I explain that I had to actively not blame anyone and fight the instinct to get angry. Sadness worked better than anger, when you wanted someone to lean on. We were sad together, resigned to one of those crappy scenarios where things aren't going your way and you're really just helpless in the face of it.
I'm so sorry, he says.
It sucks. I was looking forward to being there, too.I know. It's just, they are days you don't get back. But, I take a deep breath, It is what it is.
And it's a little thing in the grand scheme of it all, I echo my mother's stoic, over-the-cell-phone words.
We had just been so well-organized, I had told her.
For once!
Man plans, G-d laughs, she had replied, though I think she said it in Yiddish.
People in the community, surprised to see us still in town, are sympathetic. "It is what it is," I repeat, forcing a smile and throwing my hands up in resignation. "Wow, that's a good attitude," they all say.
What am I supposed to do? I want to say. I'm faking it till I make it.
Before we know it, we are in my parents' living room. It's hard, at first, not to dwell on the disappointment of what we've missed, but the remainder of the trip is great - rich and colorful for the kids, complete with a 5-AM snowstorm send-off (Elan:
Isn't it amazing how the cars have turned all white and rounded?).
Back at LAX. Home for 30 minutes, then off to work on one of hour of sleep the previous night. One evening of DVR and sleep, then back to work in the morning.
Thursday, Los Angeles has a windy day. That's all I can tell you about it - it was 70 degrees, and quite windy. In Chicago, it wouldn't have merited water-cooler talk, but Los Angeles isn't designed around the possibility of weather-fluctuation. When it drizzles, the city floods and people drive off cliffs.
When the wind blows, apparently, the power goes out for - wait for it - THREE DAYS!
Not everywhere, of course. Just sporadically throughout the Valley. You know, as luck would have it, like at our house. Our next-door neighbors have light.
I come home from work and light tea candles frantically as the sun goes down. I read to the kids in a tiny pool of candle light and put them to bed. Despite my efforts, it's dark - apparently it's more difficult to light a house with teeny glowing fires than it is an apartment. It's also completely silent without the comforting hum of appliances and wasted resources. I'm not scared of the dark, but I'm extremely - bored. And, ok, maybe just a little scared.
Y's still at work, so I decide to nag him.
I'm all freaked out. It's so quiet and I can't even read, it's so dark. Can you come home now?
Ok. Leaving in five.
Alone again. What to do...what to do...
I can't talk on the phone because I'm terrified of killing my cell battery. I can't watch TV, obviously, though I'd been looking forward to two-weeks-worth of recorded shows. I can't work out, because let's face it - that's too weird to do in the dark.
I walk through the house aimlessly, trying to remember what, in my life, does and does not require electricity. Can I brush my teeth, power-free? Tweeze my eyebrows? Yes, I guess I can. Can I clean? Not really, I can't see. Can I go online to look for an update? No, the lifeless DSL modem reminds me.
Can I...can I...
I can cook! On my stovetop! My father-in-law has come to pick up the majority of our perishable food for storage in their fridge, but I save a package of ground beef and, lighting our gas stovetop with a dripping candle, make fry-pan burgers. Wild rice and an avocado-tomato salad follow. I dress the buns and set the table before Y opens the front door. At my funeral, no one can say I was unproductive.
At 3 AM, my bedside clock is still dead. Friday afternoon, it's no better. In the evening, I call the DWP and speak to a man who informs me that the outlook is "Bleak. I've never seen a blackout here with no estimated resolution time," he goes on. "There are still 63,000 outages. We've got teams from Nevada and Arizona out, all working around the clock."
"Well, thanks for your help," I say.
"I wish I had better news for you." He is apologetic.
"Hey,
it is what it is, right?" I resort to the line that seems to sum everything up so well.
He sighs with relief. "You're great."
I suppose he's dealt with more angry than sad people in the past 48 hours.
When, mid-Saturday, we come home to an artificially-lit house, I scream and dance around like a maniac, to the delight and giggles of Elan and Ariel. Life is showing promise of a return to Normal. Y and I spend the evening disposing the spoiled remainders of our fridge and freezer, lavishly re-stocking. At the grocery store, I'm embarrassed at how much junk food is in my cart, and make a vow to eat better, to quit deepening the pockets of those at the Eggo corporation.
And to blog more.
