Sister, Sister
The last week has been rather dizzying, what with my sister arriving, major projects looming in photography class, and the busiest week of my work year all coinciding like an interstellar catastrophe...and of course watching peoples' lives float away down on the gulf coast, watching gas prices soaring hourly, and watching the Red Sox claw their way back yet again from another multi-run deficit doesn't make the stress level any less.First, my sister. I announced on my last post that she was arriving last Thursday morning, August 25th. Craig and I were up at 5 am and drove bleary-eyed through Boston commuter traffic to Logan, only to discover she was not on the plane. After an hour of searching, having her paged, and finally getting through security to the gate, I learned that she was actually arriving on FRIDAY, the 26th. As she was taking a red-eye, she LEFT on the 25th, but didn't arrive until the 26th. The fault lays partly with me, who plainly didn't read closely enough between the lines on her itinerary, but I must say her repeated mention of 'the 25th' did little to make me think that I was supposed to be at the airport any other day.
Yes, I was livid. I don't think Craig - who inexplicably found this immediately hilarious - much liked what he saw. Then again, he hasn't spent 36 years of his life in a sibling relationship where an incident such as this hammers home, with astounding clarity, how very little between my sister and me is on the same page. He kept saying I would find this funny soon. I glowered back at him.
So, the following morning, we repeated the procedure, and this time we found her. We had plans to be down at the cape the entire weekend so we immediately piled back into the Vanagon and headed out of the airport...only to be stymied by the toll booth operator at the head of the tunnel back into Boston. We were refused passage because we have a propane tank on board. No matter, apparently, that it is empty and broken, and no use trying to explain that fully-loaded semi-trailers barrelling through the tunnel pose a far greater explosive hazard than an empty propane tank. Rules will be rules, and after soaking us for $4.50 for the toll anyway, unearned, forced us to endure a police escort to the opposite side of the highway and pushed us northward towards Revere, instead of south towards the cape.
We decided to have breakfast before proceeding further, and give us an opportunity to consult a map and figure out how the heck to get out of Revere during the last dregs of the morning rush hour, without going through the city. We pulled over at the 'Three Yolks' diner off route 1 and sat down to a breakfast of such American proportions it would have choked a pig. 'Three Yolks' refers to EVERYTHING on the menu. Nothing seemed to come with less than three eggs. Kim and I each ordered orange juice. They came in 20 oz. soda glasses. I should have skipped the glass and asked for an I.V. drip.
We wound our way afterwards around Boston and finally made it onto a major route south that wasn't going to result in our being suspected of terrorism via an empty and broken propane tank on an '86 Vanagon with a somewhat testy idle (see posts from March for tales from the South Carolina Vanagon rescue adventure). A weekend of warm beach weather on the cape was a welcome relief.
As for things with my sister...she's still here, and I'm surprisingly calm. My feelings about it all are still kind of mixed up and uncertain. I realize it's definitely me, and not her, and that's troubling. I guess I haven't got it sorted out enough in my head to commit it to words yet, and I suspect that when I do, the statements will be sometimes sad, sometimes hopeful, harsh, loving, and contradictory.
All of which, for now, sums up the whole thing rather nicely.
Take care.
posted by Maquinna @ 9:10 a.m.
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