"So will you be stopping here on your way back or on your way down," asked my last living aunt who happens to be on the brink of her 90th birthday. What? Stop in Pittsburgh on my way back (or to) Florida? I quickly grabbed my Google map directions. There's no Pittsburgh on my directions...no Pennsylvania on my map...and no earthly reason that I cannot change my route. I reply, "I don't think we can do that Max...it's not on the way." Silence. "Oh. Okay....but it sure would be nice to see you guys." More silence and the Cloak of Guilt descends and I basically feel like shit.
My aunt, the sister of my mother, the last living member of a family of 7 children, the one I am most like....the person who fed me an endless diet of corn on the cob, spaghetti and hamburgers and laid the foundation for my pedestrian food preferences....the woman who made sure I had great summers at the lake and a "family" that was normal...a woman who by all indications should be dead from the lung cancer, stroke, COPD, and congestive heart failure that plagues her.....wants to see me (probably for the last time)... And I don't want to go out of my way. May a large pot hole swallow me up as I drive through Indiana and touch the edges of Pennsylvania with my tires. May the frackers, hidden and well guarded in the western Pennsylvania hills, release their toxic gasses and cause a calamity that affects only me....oh dear....Guilt is paralyzing.
I have been asking myself for years why I don't go visit more often. It's an 11 hour drive. It's boring but not awful. I never have an answer that meets with my approval....and the last time I acted on the idea that I would actually go was three years ago when I had to fulfill a promise to spread my Mom, Dad and sister's ashes over my grandparents' grave. (well that didn't work out very well...) My husband went with me and declared that this area of western Pennsylvania (25 miles outside of Pittsburgh) and many of the people he met, made him think of the movie Deliverance. He hummed the banjo tune from that film the entire trip.Jackass.
My primary and oft repeated excuse is the weather and the time of the year. If it snows in western Pennsylvania - you're stuck. It's happened to me several times....once I got stuck for a month. It's all hills and valleys. You just get snowed in. With the people from Deliverance, my cousin and her kids, and Aunt Max. So winter is out. There is no excuse for summer...or fall...or Spring. Or at least none I can think of.
Will we re-route? I don't know. I do know that she will continue to ask and I will continue to wiggle and squirm. And if I don't get to spend time with her at least once more...I will wiggle and squirm and kick my ass all over the place for being so lazy. At the end of my life, who will I want to see? My son? No because he wouldn't come. My niece and nephew? Maybe. Whomever it is....I would probably not ask - I would just hope, But not Max, she's just going to keep asking and part of me hopes she wears me down.
No comments:
Post a Comment