Wake Up Calls

When things seem to be going poorly, the last thing you want to see is that you've been assigned to row 13 on your flight.

I knew it couldn't be good news when I heard my phone vibrating at six yesterday morning and saw my brother's name flash across the screen. My guess was that he wasn't calling me to report on the weather in Florida, where he was spending a long anticipated and much deserved few days. We knew before he left New York that mom was struggling with back pain, but we relied on our combined expertise (he's a psychiatrist, I'm just an unsympathetic lazy bitch) to determine that her agony was more about mental agitation than physical agony and I insisted my brother stick with his plan and get the heck out of Dodge.  "I'll fly in if need be," I assured him, fairly certain that need would not be.

This isn't the first time I've miscalculated, and I'm sure it won't be the last. As it turned out, need was, and, within two hours of the surprise wake up call, I had booked flights, packed, gotten my daughter to school and Manny to the dog lady, changed my work schedule, cancelled all the day's appointments, and was on my way to the airport.  The rest of the morning is a bit of a blur; I fell asleep the minute the plane hit the runway and somehow found myself on a death defying taxi ride into Manhattan, where I was to meet mom at her doctor's office.

When I was young -- before my sophomore year encounter with organic chemistry destroyed my dreams of becoming a doctor -- I always envisioned myself in a white coat in a fancy little street level office in a posh apartment building on the upper east side. Yesterday, except for the white coat, I came pretty darn close. It took me three tries to get the heavy door open when they buzzed me in. ("Push the daw hawd!" someone shrieked from within, and I walked in feeling like an idiot. It was only after sitting for a while and hearing the same refrain repeated each time a new patient arrived that I realized what I had thought was impatience and nastiness was really just a fond New York welcome.)

Exhausted from the door pushing fiasco, I entered the waiting room feeling a bit self conscious about my casual attire, particularly when I located mom perched in a corner chair. There she was, her make up perfect, her outsized David Yurman earrings and matching necklace in place, her elegant St. John suit looking as fresh as the day it was purchased. She sat ramrod straight, showing no signs of spinal discomfort. Her smile was broad and genuine. What could be better? She was sitting in a fancy upper east side Jewish doctor's office. It don't get any better than that -- unless, of course, it's your son's name engraved on the plaque outside the door.

Well, the doctor was very nice and not a prima donna at all and he politely told my mother that an eighty-one year old with osteoporosis is bound to have an occasional problem with a bone or two, and this was neither life threatening nor curable. Mom nodded, even though she had no idea what he said (remember? she's deaf!), and proceeded to talk, nonstop, about lots of stuff that was totally irrelevant to why we were there. To pass the time, the nice Jewish doctor taught me some "old school" Yiddish with which I could impress all the goys in Chicago.

Finally, after we spent about an hour clarifying the instructions of the new medication he was prescribing (one pill, once a day), off we went. Which, finally, brings me to what this post is about, i.e. how much I enjoy any trip to New York, especially these days. Before we headed off to Brooklyn, I ran across the street to a food vendor, where I picked us up some hot dogs and jumbo pretzels. Ambrosia. I gazed out the window of the car ("caw") service, enjoying the colorful mosaic and listening to the cacophony of horns, profanity, whistles, and noises of unknown origin that shape the city of my youth. Sweet nostalgia. I met my son for dinner, wrote down several things he said as only he could say them, and walked arm in arm with him for several blocks, oblivious to the hustle bustle of Park Slope, thrilled to be in such close proximity to my middle child. Pure bliss.

Mom's okay, and I earned some points for getting up off my lazy, unsympathetic ass. Now I can get back to business, to wondering why New Jersey is flying its flags at half staff for a dead rock star and not for the soldiers who lose their lives every day. Yesterday, my flight in row 13 went off without a hitch, and I am hopeful that row 26, today, will be equally uneventful. And I'll look forward, as always, to my next trip to the Big Apple.