November 15, 2004

There and Back Again

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat; it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

This weekend Calvin and I have been "there and back again". As is quite usual for our (increasingly) hectic life. Calvin is on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He wears two different phones and a pager at all times, and nearly clanks when he walks. There's a constant nagging at the back of his mind, especially on the weekends, that the phone or pager could go off at any second, and it's "ready set go" time. Many times he's able to fix issues over the phone, either by stepping through the process with the person on the other end, or dialing into their controls with his laptop. So at 10:30 on Friday night when I, sitting in the living room, heard Calvin's phone go off in the bedroom (and heard his subsequent cursing), I figured it would more than likely be one of those easily fixed deals and we could get on with our weekend.

It was not meant to be.

The issue wasn't something Calvin could step the guy through, and Calvin wasn't able to talk to their site via his laptop. So he came stomping out into the living room, and responded to my, "What's up?" with, "I've gotta go to Flagstaff."

"Oh, man. Really?"
"Yup."
"Do you want me to go with you?"
"Hell, I don't care."

Calvin was in a ripper of a mood - for which I don't blame him. Even the most boring of Friday nights spent at home is greatly preferable over going to a job site in the middle of the night. I sat for a moment, considering. I could go to bed and toss and turn and worry about Calvin driving for over two hours through mountainous terrain in the middle of the night and in a foul mood, or I could get dressed (I was in my jammies), grab a coat (it was 29 degrees in Flagstaff, as opposed to 65-ish in our area at that time of night), grab my pillow and a couple of good CD's, grab a book in case I had some idle time to kill, and go along for the ride.

Calvin stomped back and forth between the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom. I sat and thought. And knew that if it were ME that had to interrupt my weekend in order to drive somewhere in the cold and dark to address who knows what problem and not be able to go home until who knows when, I'd want some company myself. So I got up, got dressed, gathered my things, and told Marie what was going on. She opted to stay home, which at sixteen I guess she's fully capable of. I did feel a bit of worry leaving her alone, though, even though we anticipated being back by 4:00 a.m. So we admonished her to keep the doors locked and call our cell if she needed us, which she registered with a wave as she sat on her bed, engrossed in the movie "White Chicks".

You can imagine the level of NON-interest that Calvin and I had in the movie.

We had also been fielding phone calls from Michael and Lilly since about 2:30 in the afternoon, when Lilly's water broke and they phoned on their way to the hospital. There would be a span of about 45 minutes where we would be out of cell range in the mountains, which somewhat interrupted our half-hourly updates.

We got on the road with all of this in mind. About fifteen minutes into the ride, Calvin let out an explosive sigh, reached across for my hand, and said, "I'm really glad you came. It makes this a whole lot better." Which made me feel a whole lot better, to know that I was making a bad circumstance easier to bear for him. Yeah, yeah, it's all wuz-a-fuzzy and snoofie snoofie and shit, but hey, I love the guy, okay?

We bogarted Marie's new mix CD for the ride (heh, I just typed "rude" instead of "ride", which pretty much describes the CD) and cranked along to Petey Pablo and LL Cool J and Ciara and Lil Jon and Pitbull and Snoop and Trick Daddy and Usher - basically all of the songs (that we aren't sick of yet) that are hitting heavy rotation on our local Top 40 station, where their motto is, "Hear the same six songs every hour on the hour until your ears bleed! Now with More Commercials and Inane Banter!".

Route in green - 2.3 hours, 148 miles, 2 naps, 3 CD's

We talked. We listened to music. I napped. There was nothing to see out the windows, until we got out of the city and I looked UP. There were stars, everywhere. A thick, thick blanket such as I haven't seen since I lived in Maine. No city lights, a waning moon, and a cloudless sky. When I wasn't sleeping, I had my head plastered against the glass, gazing at the stars.

Calvin woke me up just as we were getting into the "main drag" in Flagstaff, after midnight. For once, the "You can't miss it" directions were accurate, and we found the facility easily enough. As Calvin was trying to ferret out the tech he needed to work with, we got a call from Michael. Devlin Arturo was born at 11:52 on November 12th, three weeks early (I called it!) but weighing in at a very respectable 7 lbs. 1 oz. Michael was crying, I could hear Lilly talking cheerfully in the background, and the very healthy lungs of a newborn boy.

I got Calvin's attention (he was standing RIGHT next to the truck and didn't realize the honking was coming from me - I had to bang on the window) so he could talk with Michael. Then the tech arrived and Calvin handed the phone back to me. We parked and walked into the facility through the lobby, while I stayed on the phone with Michael. The reception started breaking up in the stair well, and by the time we reached the bowels of the building, I had lost him.

Calvin settled himself at the computer in the very typical building maintenance room - manuals, blueprints, beat up metal desk and leather chair, grime, cobwebs, florescent lighting, and MICE. Yes, mice. Casually wandering around and making the tech jump like a girl. Heh.

I made sure I knew how to find the location again, then went back upstairs to sit on the couch in the lobby and call Michael back. He picked up with a, "Yeah?" I could tell he was still choked up. "Oh man, Laura, this is the most incredible feeling." The baby looks just like Michael, with Lilly's chin, apparently (they're computer is on the fritz, otherwise I'd have digital pics to share). We won't see them until this Friday when they drive out to spend Thanksgiving week with us. I only spoke with Michael for a few moments, then let him go so they could get some rest. I wandered back to the tech room, where nothing interesting was still happening, then went back to the lobby to settle down and read. I brought three books because I didn't know which book to read in the two minutes I had to decide before we left - I settled on The Inheritor by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Which, of course, I've read before. But it's a comfort book (well, not the topic, but the familiarity and easy-readability and the fact that I know I like it), which was what I was up for at one in the morning.

My eyes started getting really heavy - I looked at the time on my cell phone, and was startled (and even more tired) to see that it was 2:20. Yeee-awn. So, I went off in search of Calvin again, and found him wrapping things up down in the tech room. We were finally out of there a half-hour later, wicked WICKED tired. We knew there was no way we'd make it "back down the mountain" without fortification. Next stop, Denny's, for an "All American Slam" for Calvin, and a slice of coconut cream pie for me. With, of course, coffee coffee coffee. I don't know why I've always loved going to Denny's (or a similar establishment) in the middle of the night. The sometimes questionable crowd, the rowdy groups of kids who really shouldn't be out that late, the desperately awake folks trying not to realize how close to dawn we all are and how little sleep we're going to have when we finally get home.

We were back on the road around 4:00, and once again I had my head thunked up against the window, star-gazing. We listened to Fleetwood Mac, and Calvin reached over to hold my hand. He asked me if I'd like him to pull over at the scenic view coming up along the road, to look at the stars. At first, looking at the time and the temperature display on the rear-view mirror (29 degrees?!?), I said, "Nah, that's okay." Then I got to thinking about how LONG it's been since I really saw the stars, and how it made me feel almost homesick to look at them now, and changed my mind. "Yeah, actually, would you mind?" And Calvin, bless his heart, pulled over at nearly 5:00 in the morning, so his crazy wife could star-gaze in freezing temperatures in the middle of nowhere. We put our jackets on, and he came to stand behind me and wrap his arms around me. We looked up and up and up, and the longer we gazed, the more layers of stars, further and further distant, were revealed. We breathed in the smell of clean, clear, cold, pine-tinged air. We found planets among the stars, and looked for satellites. It was absolutely silent, except for the occasional shush of cars passing on the road behind us. Finally, the cold got the better of us, and we got back in the truck.

It wasn't long before I fell asleep again, safe in the knowledge that Calvin was taking good care of me. We pulled into our driveway just before 6:00 a.m., cold and tired and craving bed. We snuggled up against one another, feet entwined, my head against his shoulder, and fell asleep in two minutes.

Round trip, with techie troubleshooting stuff, a baby's birth, 300 miles, and Denny's in between - total elapsed time seven and a half hours.

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©Laura Charon 2000 - infinity.