Episode 75: Road Trippin'

Friday was my grandmother's 93rd birthday, a fantastic accomplishment for a diabetic woman who has lived through two world wars, the great depression, cancer, heart disease and a mild stroke. How does such a resilient person ring in her 93rd year? With a hoppin party in a nursing home conference room, of course. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "So it goes."

I have always been very close to my grandmother. I spent a lot of time as a kid at her house and as a teenager I would always make it a point to visit and give her rides. As I got older, my dad and I would take her to dinner every Saturday night. He even kept it up after he and my mom divorced, even though she was his mother in law, a tradition that ended just a few years ago when she started to have more health problems. Gram is a sweet Italian woman who grew up in a tight home with none brothers and sisters. She is the best cook on the planet and no one cares more about her family than her.

You can tell that attending her birthday is important to me, but unfortunately for us, the ultra-depressing party venue was located in my home town of Pittsfield, which is a good two and a half hour drive from Salem. We have made the trip with the baby before, but never when she has been this mobile or conscious of her surroundings. This one was shaping up to be a challenge on our part. How the hell do you entertain a kid on a long car ride when she barely has enough patience to sit in a high chair for dinner?

Aside from somehow keeping a baby happy in a car for three hours, I had the usual family visit stress going on in my head. Unlike Monica, who lives 45 minutes from her family- who she actually seems to enjoy visiting- I have to travel three hours to see a group of people of whom I care for half, at the most.

I have some pretty terrible memories of family events, especially Gram's birthdays from the past, most of which center around many members of the family being selfish, annoying, stuck up drunks, but I was pretty sure that crowding around her in a nursing home was probably going to be the worst one yet.

So, with that in the back of my head, we piled in to the car around 7:30 a.m. and headed out. I tried to think of the positives, like my mother and sister getting to spend time with the baby, visiting with my aunt and uncle who were making the trip from Rhode Island and checking out the new deli my Dad and his wife opened up in their new house. I told myself that the birthday party would be a quick one and tried to convince myself that none of the aunts, uncles and cousins that I have disassociated myself from would show up.

The baby actually did surprisingly well for the majority of the trip, playing with her toys and watching Baby Einstein videos on the new lap top that we brought along. Aside from a Coke machine at a rest stop eating my dollar, the ride was pretty good. Pretty good until we got off of the highway, that is. Anyone who has lived in the western part of the state for any length of time can tell you just how dreadful trying to drive in that region can be. Now, I live in Salem, which has to be one of the top 5 worst places to drive on the planet. The roads are all old and narrow, traffic always gets backed up and 10 months out of the year there are so many idiot out of town tourists banging u-turns in the middle of the road that you feel like you will never get where you are going. Still, I think I would take that over driving in Western Mass. The problem out there is not traffic, or tourists, it is clueless people and the feeling that everything can be done at a leisurely pace. Thus, it takes forever to get anywhere because everyone drives 10 miles per hour no matter what the speed limit may be. This situation becomes worse after two hours of highway driving with a baby who just wants to get the hell out and run around, so you can imagine that the last half hour of country road driving was pretty rough.

After a brief trip to my dad's new store, which featured a surprise visit from my grandparents who live in North Carolina, we headed to my mother's house to meet up with my aunt and uncle and down a few beers before the nursing home party. As usual, we were all trying to keep a positive attitude before we left and, in the day's first real moment of dysfunction, made an executive decision to pack a cooler full of beers and sneak them in to the home. I don't know if drinking in a nursing home is allowed, I can't imagine that it is, but we felt better to sneak the cooler in either way, just in case. The thought was that it was just going to be about seven or eight of us and that Gram wouldn't care either way. We covered the beer with water and Sprite and packed some keg cups. I likened it to being 19 again, trying to sneak alcohol in to the under 21 dorms at Salem State.

When we got to the home the scene was much worse than I had imagined. Gram was sitting at the head of a conference table next to her 90-year-old sister. Surrounding her were the previously mentioned disassociated aunt, uncle and cousins, including my cousin Tom who has recently been released from the hospital following an alcohol abuse- related liver transplant. There goes that idea of getting a buzz at the party. Or so I thought.

After saying my hello's and spending a little time talking to Gram (who was in unusually exceptional spirits, probably because of the baby and her sister being there) I heard my uncle, who is Liver Transplant's father, ask what was in the cooler. After finding out it was beer he turned to my mom and said "How about handing me one of those 'special ginger ales.'" I felt both shocked and awkward at the same time. My uncle had clearly been drinking already, and no one seemed concerned about the prospect of cracking open a Coors Light in front of a guy who just had a liver transplant and got out of rehab. So, I grabbed a beer, popped the top off with a lighter and joined the party.

Did I feel awkward? Sure, for a minute, but I figured if the guy's own father was doing it, who cares. After pounding a Sprite and twitching for a minute, Liver Transplant got up and said he had to leave so that he could go to the movies with his wife and step daughter. Later I asked my mom about the situation and she reminded me of how much of an asshole my cousin was, how he never spoke to my grandmother even when they lived in the same house and how the liver transplant was kind of his own fault. Heartless? Maybe a little, but she made some good points.

The plan to not get caught with the beer took a hit almost immediately, as the baby, who was being supervised by my mother, was able to get her hands on a keg cup sitting on the end of the table and spill beer all over the carpet. The staff never came in to question us, but I have a feeling that we may not be allowed back there once they head in to clean the room. All in all the party wasn't as bad as everyone thought, although Gram did take a turn for the worse at the end when she got tired walking to a music show in the community room and had to struggle over to the nurses' station so she didn't pass out. Not the best way to see your grandmother when you know you may not be back there for a while, but she seemed to recover once she sat down and we had a nice goodbye.

The rest of the day was nice, cooking out on the gill at my mother's house and shooting the breeze, but I had a tough time shaking feelings of sadness that I had to leave Gram in the home, knowing full well it could be the last time I see her, and the feeling of overall disappointment that I dislike more members of my family than I actually like. But, I guess every family is like that in a way.

As we were getting ready to leave I was thinking back about the day, listening to Gram and her sister reminisce, laughing with my mom and aunt and hanging out at my dad's new store and I started to feel a little bad that I was leaving. "I could see myself maybe hanging around here more," I thought. Then I got in the car and drove behind a bunch of losers who drove 10 miles per hour all the way back to the highway and I thought, "Maybe not so much. Maybe next time the family can hang out here."

We ended up getting on the road a little before 6 p.m., which is about an hour before the baby normally goes to sleep. We were sure, since she didn't nap all day, that she would pass right out and we would have a silent ride home. No dice. The baby was awake the entire trip. Sometimes staying quiet, other times screaming just to make noise. The worst part? She decided that she was going to squeeze out a dump just after we passed the last rest stop, but still about 45 minutes away from home. So, after a strange day of fun, dysfunction, depression and borderline alcoholism, with my back killing me, my eyes trying to force themselves shut and a Led Zeppelin rock block on the radio ( I F-ing hate that band) I was forced to sit in a tiny box of stink for the final leg of the trip. Not the best end to a busy day.

Hopefully, as the baby gets older, she will toughen up her sleep habits so we can maybe take road trips over a span of two days instead of one. I will say one thing. Before we had Av I used to scoff at those people who bought cars with DVD players in the back seat for their kids. After yesterday, I totally get it.