So yesterday was only Tuesday, but it already felt like it had been a very long week. The day before, I provided my customary early morning shuttle service from our home in Henly to the hospital in Austin. The passengers alternate between the General and her sister. After all, riding with me is less expensive than riding with Uber. Besides that, Uber was invited to hit the road by the Austin City Council a couple of years ago and is no longer an option. I guess you could say riding with me is also more reliable.
Monday morning the General was my passenger. The General’s sister had spent the night at the hospital. I outfitted myself with my laptop and two telephones. I could work from the waiting room while the two of them occupied the only chairs in their mother’s hospital room.
Fortuitously for me, I asked the General a simple question, but one for which I didn’t have the answer. The question was: “What is the date?" She responded, “The 26th.” Somehow I was shocked by that revelation. For well over a week now, I’ve had in my head that my trip to Washington, D.C. was set for Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Because of the General’s mother’s health status, I’ve struggled back and forth as to whether I needed to reschedule. It is a tough call.
The revelation that Monday was the 26th put a new perspective on things. That meant that my flight out of Austin was the next morning. I was both relieved and overwhelmed. I was relieved because I anticipated that I could make it to D.C. and back before the General’s mother’s health status worsened. I know what you're thinking? You're thinking of asking: " And on what were you basing that?" I don’t know. I also knew that I had a lot to do before I was ready to set across the table from the folks in D.C. with whom I had appointments.
As it turned out on Monday morning after I got to the hospital, I found that the waiting room was already crowded and I didn’t have ample privacy for the work I needed to generate on my laptop and for some of the phone calls I needed to make. I back-tracked to the General’s mother’s room and signed out with the General. I was going back home and would check back in later in the day.
Later in the day came sooner. Andrea had stopped by the hospital Monday morning and offered a ride back to our home to the General’s sister. Consequently, they arrived at the house around 1:30 p.m. That meant the General would be sitting alone in her mother’s room until the following morning.
Call it guilt or call it compassion, I opted to set aside the work I needed to get done and headed back to the hospital. Walking outside, I was surprised at how warm the weather had turned. It was a perfect day for a ragtop adventure. For a February day, I wasn’t going to complain. I also wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. I walked back in the house and switched keys and I was off with the top down.
Taking the back-roads into Austin is so much more relaxing than driving down Hwy 290. I don’t know why I don’t do that more often. The 30-to-40 minute back-road commute to the hospital was invigorating. Seriously, ragtop conditions had never been better. The immediate benefit took a truckload of stress off my shoulders. I was a new man.
I may have been a new man, but I was thinking like the old one. Talk about painting oneself into a corner. I had forgotten that the General’s brother had volunteered to stay overnight at the hospital on Monday night. That meant the General would be riding home with me.
“Hello Houston we’ve got a problem!” There was no way the General was going to ride home with me with the top down. For starters, by 7:15 p.m. it was a tad bit cooler outside. The General doesn’t do cool and she doesn’t do top down. Okay, so that was the General’s perspective. I had a sense she would be inclined to be unrelenting in her resolve to do it her way.
Wasn’t it Shakespeare’s character Polonius in Hamlet who said: “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man”?
Consequently, I decided to clear the air and let the General know my expectations for getting home. We obviously had no recourse but to make the commute home with the top down. That was a commitment I made to myself when I bought the car. I resolved that if the wheels were moving, the top had to be down.
Actually, the General didn’t see it the same way. She said something about, “Rules are made to be broken”. I was astonished with her verbalizing such outlandish behavior. She looked at me as though she could teach me a thing or two. We weren’t driving home with the ragtop down seemed to be her equally stubborn resolve. What to do?
Actually, it was the General’s brother’s wife who came to the rescue. She and the General’s brother arrived at the hospital around 7:00 to 7:30 p.m. We mentioned our plans to take the General’s sister out to dinner to celebrate her birthday. The sister-in-law said: “What fun. Do you mind if I join in celebrating the birthday?” It was a perfect solution. The General could ride with her and I could do a ragtop-down solo all the way home.
Did I mention the weather was cool? In a worry free modus operandi, I turned on the car’s heater and cranked it up. The sky never looked better and I was toasty warm all the way home.
It felt good to stick to my guns and use the car the way I envisioned that it would be used. The top down carries an added extra dimension that puts the fun back in driving.
All My Best!
Don