As unlikely as this seems, this being my birthday and all, I am sitting in the waiting room while a doctor injects another shot into Bob’s eyeball. It gives me a queasy feeling and I am squinting as I write this and I also know that I am relieved it is his eyeball and not mine. The drug, which is used conventionally to fight colorectal cancer, turns out to also stabilize macular degeneration. How, I ask myself, would someone figure that out? What possible similarities can there be between a malignant cancer way down the gut and a condition that ultimately robs a person of center sight? Who said, “Hey, let’s try this stuff in an eye!”
But this is not what I wanted to write about at all though there is a tenuous connection. Aging and not being the person you once were, that’s the connection. Last Friday we packed our van with all the paraphernalia for the Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck: tables, table cloths, the two dollar rug I once got from my cousin Nancy, a director’s chair, gridded panels and fixtures to hold scarves and yarns, photos and shawls, lights and their spare parts and tools, decorative wreathes of autumnal leaves, Vietnamese baskets and several plastic tubs of product, our clothes and all our paraphernalia and after tearful farewells to the dogs we left. (The cockatiels and the cats Mischa and Muizza, the goats and the peafowl are pretty stoic about farewells and didn’t immediately fall to the ground, abject and pleading. Elli had to be dragged from the van. Fenris was burdocked to Bob’s leg)
We had gotten all the way to Hawley on 8A having already parked to eat the many strange and mislabeled dishes from Keystone that Bob had bought for lunch when I remembered the essential paperwork–parking pass, insurance papers, sales tax certificate–all sitting right on my desk and although I suspected we could probably survive without this bureaucratic back-up, I knew it was best to go fetch it. So back we went. The dogs had dragged a 10-pound bag of sugar out into the kitchen and chewed a hole in it, thinking no doubt, they would find doggie kibbles or kitty bits, but fortunately as I had forbidden Bob to come in again, Elli and Fen walked away from me and went out the back; I am just chump change to them. So we are on our way again feeling only a bit aggrieved.
I’ll skip the drive, the set-up, even the night at the motel not far from the Kingston/Rhinebeck Bridge where we had stayed last year and where we planned to stay just Friday night as we had made plans to spend Saturday with our Staten Island friends Barbara and Michael. We didn’t need dinner on Friday as our Keystone lunches were still sitting cannonball-like in our stomachs. But I will add that the night attendant in the motel was a close relative–we’re talking personality here–of the owner of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I reminded him of a teacher he had had. “Whew, that’s probably not so good,” I said. “Oh no, I liked her a lot! But why are you only staying one night?” he wanted to know. I explained.
Saturday was not a beautiful fall day but the crowds were as always thick, the food lines endless, the buildings crowded with folks wearing all the sweaters and ponchos and vests they had made. There was a sprinkling of women with pink or lime green or turquoise mohawks, but our business seemed slow and leaving the fairgrounds at 5:30 was the usual traffic jam that stretched for miles. When we had finally gotten across the bridge I said to Bob, “Hey, give Mike a call and tell him we’re heading down 199 so we’ll be there soon and just check with him for the landmarks we need.” The sun was already setting, the sky dark with clouds and I had just realized that I had left my Kindle back in the booth. Bob dialed the number, then said,” Uhhh, she says the number is not in service.” He tried twice more, I tried. The number was not in service. Great! Clearly they have forsaken their landline for cell phones. I look in my address book, we have only a box number, no street name. I look on my phone–maybe they are in my contact list. No, they’re not. By now night has fallen and 199 has segued into the narrow, winding, mainly shoulderless 209 which will take us through Stone Ridge and New Paltz and on to Wawarsing. Headlights are blinding me, deer are waiting to leap in front of me, some jerk is tailgating with his high beams on and we are trying to remember something, anything about where we are headed. “I think their farm is called Deer Run Something” I venture, “And wasn’t there something about a water tower?” And after a fairly abstemious day I am already smelling the home-smoked meats that Mike has prepared for us and tasting the bottle of red wine he has promised to open.
As slowly as we can in a long line of commuters rushing to get home, we try to read the names on the little roads that turn off 209 and we do see a tower of sorts, though it’s on the wrong side of the road and we do venture down a couple of these little roads but they end up in trailer parks and I’m not about to knock on a stranger’s door to ask if they know Barbara or Mike or have ever heard of Deer Run Farm. Nor is Bob. I pull off into the state police barracks to ask but there is a sign on the door saying “We are all away patrolling the roads. Please use the phone” and an arrow pointing. I don’t and we drive out again, followed instantly by a state trooper from the barracks. Ah, I think. I’ll pull over and he’ll stop to ask why we were at the barracks. I stop, he doesn’t.
Because I don’t have my Kindle with me (Damn!!) I can’t check email so next I call home where Bob’s daughter Sally is minding the farm and ask her to turn on the computer and find old email with just maybe a phone number. She finds one…it is Barbara’s work number. Not hopeful, though I know she is actually at work right then at SUNY New Paltz, I leave a pathetic message but I know she won’t check her phone. And so, defeated, angry about forgetting the Kindle, annoyed that people would relinquish their good landlines for crummy cell reception, hungry, worn out and feeling about 105 we head back to the motel. Our Best Exotic Marigold desk clerk is amused to see me again, crestfallen and weary, and we get another room. In Kingston we find a diner where we eat a meal not unlike the Keystone lunch. We vow we will never do the Rhinebeck show again. We are too old, period.
The next day Barbara comes and spends several hours with us and we have a great time and make plans for them to visit later this year. We warn her of our closed bridge. Sales are still pretty underwhelming but yesterday I signed us up for another year. And this morning I found, in a little tray on my desk, a business card with a map drawn on the back and Barbara’s cell phone number carefully saved from last year. You just can’t let age get you down!
