A long strange trip

As most strange trips happen, this one showed up out of nowhere, turns on a dime and suddenly I’m not sitting at home in front of dinner watching TV. I was going to visit my mom yesterday when Teri called me and asked me to stop off at Rite Aid to pick up a prescription for Amanda. I told Teri okay and made a right turn to head toward Rite Aid instead of my mom’s. On occasions like this I alway hope that skipping seeing her is not a mistake. Yes, I’m being positive she would never intentionally leave, but some things are beyond everyone's control. Tonight, Friday I decided to again go see my mom. Lately she and Bruce are alway in front of the TV. It being too hot to do much outside. I arrive around twenty after five. I sit and the three of us start talking about random things. She asks about Teri and her job hunt, the girls and their boyfriends. Earlier in the day, about 4:17, Elena texts that Matt might be joining us for dinner.Teri says, “That’s fine, I’m making meatballs. At 5:10 she texts she is not home for dinner. Something came up with Matt and she is going to get him. At 5:16,Teri asks where she is getting him from? She doesn’t answer. Seven minutes pass and I look at the texts. Something is up and I ask her where she is going to pick him up? She answers, Long Island. I immediately get on the phone to call her. She picks up quickly. I’m guessing she was hoping someone would go with her. I ask her what is going on and why she is going to Long Island to pick him up. She gives me an answer I have trouble comprehending. I hear the words, but they don’t have meaning.I tell her to come to Grammy’s and pick me up, she can’t go alone. I did expect her to fight about it, but while writing this I realize she wanted someone to go with her. While I wait for her to show up My mom keeps telling me to sit down and relax. I tell her I can't. I'm so angry. Teri calls and I tell her what I can. I don’t know at this point how Matt got out there and why he has no car to get home with. Teri tells me not to be angry with Elena, or Matt. And I’m really not angry at them. I’m angry that it is Friday at 5:45, we need to cross the Tappan Zee Bridge (Just stop, there is no Cuomo Bridge!) go the Cross Westchester Expressway, cross the Throgs Neck Bridge, and then transverse Long Island all the way to Amityville (yes, this is a horror- come on now the movie, Amityville Horror. It may have aged poorly, but at one time…!!Just like the Exorcist!!) This trip we’re taking is going to get us back home at 10:00, if we’re lucky and don’t hit traffic. She pulls up a little before 6:00 and off we go. Elena has programmed her phone to tell us how to go. In the old days I reach into my milk case of tri-state maps and select the relevant maps to guide us on our journey. Well since Google Maps and the internet, I’ve thrown all my maps away. That’s not completely true. I saved them in my garage for ten years just to make sure I didn’t need them and I threw them out just recently.. Whatever program she is using has us going over the George Washington Bridge. I tell Elena,at $16.00 we’ll cross the Tappan Zee Bridge (Don’t get me started again!) Her map program adjusts quickly and it is just as happy to guide us going over the Tappan Zee Bridge. I do believe the map program really doesn’t care we saved somewhere around $10.00 just on a left turn down RT 59 instead of up RT 59 toward the Palisades Parkway.

Once over the bridge and yes Elena is driving I explain, like a guide on a New York City bus tour how originally the road went toward the Bronx and how now the exit look more like where the road goes because most people want to go to White Plains and not the Bronx.I’ll get into the Bronx later. If I had my handy maps with me I’d have gone the Cross Westchester to I95 to The Throgs Neck Bridge. No, not modern technology. Now it may have saved us time sitting in traffic, or it may have wanted us to sample a little bit of all the roads between Rockland County and Amityville and oh yes, the horror of it all! We go, Cross Westchester, to Sprain Brook, where I relate to Elena the fascinating story how when I was her age the Sprain Brook ended just after where we got on and the road would alway be empty, so we’d take it to Yankee games. Or I wanted to avoid boring her and said the road used to end back there. I don’t remember. We head down the Sprain, hit a little traffic and the program tells us it is time to embark on a quick scenic trip of the Cross Bronx Expressway. And hey, it gave me a chance to tell one of my Bronx stories( See I told you, I’d get back to the Bronx.) My story she is not so impressed with. It is a tale of empty burned out building in the 70’s and how it was an eerie waste land reminiscent of a science ficton or horror film (oh, the horror of it all) After a few minutes we exit the Bronx and head toward the Cross Island Parkway. I tell her my story about trailering my boat on the Cross Island, a road where only cars are allowed and how I was taking a girl out on my boat I liked, want to impress and the cops got on their loud speaker and threw us off the road. I made a mistake. We crossed The Throgs Neck Bridge, then took the Cross Island to the Long Island Expressway. I expected us to stay on that road, but nooooo, the program sent us to a connecting road and we ended up on the Southern State Parkway. It’s a road that didn’t prompt a story so much as a cautionary tail, or maybe a proverb, definitely not a haiku. Whatever it was I told her this was another old road built for less traffic going at a slower speed and over the years they have added lanes to make it even more dangerous.So she should be careful. This whole trip she has driven like a pro. She has been careful and patient. She honks her horn when someone cuts in front of her, but this is New York, so it’s expected. Sometime around 7:30 we pull onto this quiet side street just past some brand new right on the street, in your face condos. I’m sure they’ll go for over a million each (All you future people, at one time a million dollars was a lot of money, not what you use to tip your waiter in your time) We pass the right turn we need to make, but a second one appears that is just as good. We ask a guy walking (me ask a guy for directions? Yeah, Elena told me to do it otherwise I might still be looking for building 11) In front of building 11, standing there, waiting for the last several hours is Matt. Elena gives him a Forest Gump wave, you know when Forest is on his boat and sees lieutenant Dan on the dock.(Future people, you better know that movie, it’s a classic!)

Matt works as security in a hospital in upper Manhattan. He is having issues with his boss and as an outsider looking in with limited information, it looks to me like they want to get him to quit. He is told to ride with the ambulance crew who is taking a person to another hospital in Amityville. When they drop off the person the crew tells him they are not allowed to have passengers in the ambulance and can not take him back to the hospital in Upper Manhattan. Matt calls his boss who tells him he is on his own. So he calls Elena, who looks like she is very much in love with Matt and who was willing to drive all the way to Amityville on Long Island to get him.The people inside the Amityville hospital are just as kind as the people who stranded Matt and have locked the door so I can’t use the bathroom. (No problem,I dealt with it, no, I didn’t find a tree, I waited.) The program (sounds like the bad guy in a low budget horror film (and yet again, Oh, the horror) you’d think would send us back the way we came at least most of the way before we veered toward Manhattan, BUT NOOOOO!!!! It starts out the same.Rt 110 to Southern…then suddenly the Wantagh and other words Elena could not pronounce who is now doing my job, tech support and is reading the directions. I won’t bore you with all the roads we take. Lets just say if we didn’t drive on them coming down, we did on the way back. We end up back at Matt’s job sometime after 8:30. He gets out and Elena and I head home. She tells me in an aside that she needs to stop because she has her period. I'm okay with hearing that, I mean she is a girl and Nastia doesn’t not talk about hers. It is a little surprising when Elena talks about hers. The bigger surprise is when she says she was getting a little nervous because it was late. Now Elena admitting to femine issues is one thing but her in an asside to me that she is sexually active is like BigFoot. There are reports about it, but they can neither be confirmed or denied. Still when I was her age all I wanted to do was have sex, so I’ve tried to be cool about their sex lives. If I got upset about it,they’d just hide it.So I accept it. At moments like this when she admits something like this I always think back to the abuse they suffered in Russia. I know some of what Nastia suffered and I know there were four tramas Elena’s therapist wanted her to talk about, so I tell her I am happy she is having sex and I hope she is enjoying it and is being safe. She says she is. We then talk about soaking, and something disgusting that I won’t talk about. I’ve probably said too much anyway. We get home, after a stop at McDonalds to eat a little before ten. Yes, what a long, strange trip it's been.