Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
Four A.M. The alarm woke me out of a deep sleep and interrupted an odd dream. I have lost the plot of it now, but it involved my old colleague Nate Richert, who played Harvey on Sabrina. We were college students, and he was in trouble, and I was trying to get him out of it. That’s all I’ve got; the particulars of the story are lost to the night. The dream is good news in that it means I was actually asleep and not in the fitful twilight which often precedes a plan to bash into an early and very long morning.
Nate is not, for the record, a guy who gets in trouble. There is no readily discernible meaning behind the meanderings of my subconscious mind. I know folks who find real value in the analysis of dreams. I am not one of them. Dreams are weird, just like life. I am always grateful to have slept and even more so to have wakened.
As I write this, the clock has just ticked past 5 A.M. The morning is moving on with things. The shuttle from the airport Marriott arrived promptly at 4:45 and delivered me to Terminal 2 in under five minutes. I had carefully packed two carry-on bags, so I breezed through security and headed for my travel refuge: the Delta lounge. It was too early for food, but I could make myself some tea and maybe pick at a bit of fruit.
The airport lounge at daybreak is sleepy. Most folks are rumpled, their bodies still trying to adjust to the brutal hour. There are always a few couples, though, who wing past dressed impeccably in designer wear, every hair in place. They insist upon sartorial competence, and my hat is off to them. There was one such couple here this morning, and if we are going by appearances—and this is America, so we mostly do—they look fresh, confident, and sure-footed, while the rest of us appear shell-shocked and are scuffling about.
This morning, I wrestled myself into comfy loose pants with a mussed T-shirt half tucked in and threw an old sweater around my shoulders. I am not a particularly stylish flyer, though I do wear clothing and attempt to at least start the trip with well-combed hair. It will be matted if I am lucky enough to take a long nap taken pressed into the sides of my seat by arrival time, but I made the effort. There is a trend amongst some travelers, (most of them young) these days to arrive for their flight clad in old pajamas and clutching a home bed pillow. If you are tempted by the sound of that, try to resist the urge. Do it for me.
Most of the people in the lounge are sipping coffees and waters, but there are always a few, and today I counted seven, who are consuming alcohol at 5 A.M. Made of stronger stuff than I, those few. One couple has, respectively, a good-sized glass of what looks like a Sauvignon Blanc, and a deep red, maybe a Cabernet. Dang. Another fellow has procured a beer, and the remaining partakers have chosen champagne, a more traditional morning drink, but a drink all the same. Yowza.
If I drank that at that hour, I would need to board the plane on a stretcher; would definitely need “extra assistance”, which is always the first zone to board. Mostly, the people who line up for that first call are in wheelchairs or have serious and obvious mobility challenges. I have, though, noticed of late that there are a lot of spry, gray-haired folks pushing down the aisle on the pretense of needing extra time who are clearly able-bodied. I guess they are taking the whole “age has its privileges” thing to heart. (In truth, there aren’t that many, so go ahead and fake your way down that aisle, Grandma, but you aren’t fooling anybody.)
“Don’t tell her that I’m coming. In case the plane gets delayed or some such,” I warned.
Her mom kept the secret. Maya had her big high-school graduation party yesterday, and I was determined to show up but had only one workable flight option (hence the pre-dawn wake-up call), and air travel can be dicey. Texas had major storms recently. Hail the size of oranges, they said. That’ll delay a plane flight right quick, but blessedly clear skies prevailed, and, with just a few minor bumps, we cruised into Austin right on schedule.
I sent flowers ahead of time just in case, to ensure that I had some kind of presence on her big day.
“To marvelous, magical Maya. Congratulations on this major milestone. I cannot wait to see how your future unfolds. I know you will make your mark. I will love you always … Auntie Beth.” Corny, I know, but heartfelt. Corny is often how I roll. Not sorry.
Maya is one of several young people who think of me as a relative, and I am honored to fill the role. She is a wonderful young woman, and I have been close to her and her family since she was six years old. I am so glad that I was able to surprise her. I was late to the party, but not by much. I got a bit discombobulated en route. So, there was much urgent texting with my friend Kat, her mom, who, of course, had her hands full with forty guests, but graciously hid any annoyance I might have been causing.
“I cannot find La Trattoria. Did you mean La Traviata? I am heading there.”
The LYFT driver was almost to that location when her text came back. “Trattoria Lysine.”
“Oh, okay; so no ’La,’ I thought. It was the “la” that had thrown me off course. Doesn’t take much, as we know. I leaned forward:
“Um, sir. I am sorry, but I have to change the destination. We are going the wrong way.”
The driver was very patient as he made the U-turn that this news required. I was a full twenty minutes out, and the party was in full swing.
“Don’t wait for me. I am goofed in the head, but finally heading in the right direction.”
PRESENT AND PROUD.
As we drove through the scenic Texas Hill Country, I made myself put the phone down and just observe the beauty of it. I arrived at the scene a full thirty minutes past the starting hour, toting my carry-on suitcase and a big, ugly backpack. The hostess spirited them away into a coat closet, and I headed in and snuck up to my darling niece.
“Hey, kiddo.”
She turned and burst into tears when she saw me, and I held her tight. “These are the moments in life that matter,” I thought.
There had been some debate in my mind about whether I should make the journey. This trip, coming on the heels of a quick jaunt to New York City to participate in a memorial for my pal Harvey, was another elective expenditure, the likes of which I have been holding myself to account for, trying to rein in.
As I contemplate the coming years, I am trying to conserve now, so that I may have more options in the future. I want the freedom to travel and live with gusto, and wherever I choose. I hope to be unencumbered by financial worry. That’s what we all want, of course, what we all have spent the last forty or fifty years working to ensure. We all want to be certain of things, to be secure in our dotage.
Good luck with that.
The markets are roiling, their future is unclear, and from many vantage points, things look pretty grim for Americans who are invested in them. That includes everyone with a pension or savings, so pretty much all of us. What if things crash? What then? Now what? The one thing I know for sure is that I don’t know a damned thing. There is no point in trying to predict what lies ahead for any of us.
A colleague of mine recently passed. It was unexpected to most who knew her. We weren’t close, but I enjoyed working with her years ago and always thought very highly of her as a person and a talent. Valerie Mahaffey was just 71. The cancer took her quickly, which may or may not have been a blessing. I hope it was the latter for her.
We won’t know, until we are faced with it, how we will greet our impending death. Maybe I will want to fight for breath with every fiber of my being, cling to every moment left to me on this earthly plane. I hope not. I hope I will agree to my fate with equanimity and allow it to come in peace, but I have not had to make that choice.
One thing for sure, though: I hope Valerie didn’t spend the year prior to her diagnosis worrying about the cost of living later. I hope she bought plane tickets and spent too much on art, and went to expensive concerts, and dined on the finest foods. I hope she was free.
If time is money, then for now I am rich. I have my health, albeit compromised by the damnable psoriatic arthritis, which I am trying to learn to be grateful for because it does not kill, only maims. Ding, ding, ding! A lucky draw, I tell myself, and most of the time I mean it.
For now, I am blessed with a foreseeable future. That is not something that everyone gets. So, I am going to go for it. When I get the chance to put my arms around the people that I care about, to celebrate the milestones or commemorate a life well lived, I am going to leap at it. I am going to spend whatever it takes to show up for love. I have the time, and I will find the money.
These are life’s precious and priceless moments. Money comes and goes. Time is all we ever really have, and there is no way to know how much of it we will be afforded.
The long and short of it is, that if time is indeed money, then by God I plan to make it count.
On we go …
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