It Takes a Village

It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a heck of a support team to get a senior citizen off on a trip.

We were reminded of that this week. We’re off at Myrtle Beach – the only trip of the summer, and Hurricane Earl be damned we were going. As it turns out, that was a great decision. Earl went north of here and we didn’t get enough rain to even moisten the pages of my trashy novel. Other than a few clouds one day, you’d never have known that weather was anything other than perfect from the beach.

If you got in the water, it was another story. There were significant undertows that pulled even someone with as much ballast as I have from their feet pretty quickly. I have a rule about never getting in water deep enough that you can’t see your feet, so it wasn’t much of an issue. Besides, there’s no bar service at the beach here, whereas there frequently is at hotel pools.

Our trip, though, coincided with one long planned by our Colombian Uncle who lives in the apartment. He’d saved for months and had a little inheritance from his mother, so he decided to take a trip that he’d always dreamed about – an Alaskan Cruise. As it turned out, he’ll come off of that cruise and get on another ship to go on a cruise that will take him from Vancouver, British Columbia down toward South America, through the Panama Canal and over to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. 

Someone who lives here (not me) is a master at trip planning and ferreting out deals on these kinds of things, and he did all of the work on this trip, just as he does on the ones we take.  My primary job is to get the stuff into the suitcases.  As a result, the traveller's itinerary is all set out, everything is paid for and he's got tickets in hand, connections are outlined and shuttles are booked.  Short of getting on a bus with 50 other senior citizens and having no discretion whatsoever in what happens, it's about as preplanned as a person can get, thanks to the dozens of hours put in planning the trip.

Did I mention that my job is to get all the stuff in the bags?
All in all, he’ll be gone six weeks. He even gets a stop in Colombia and visit with a friend that he hasn’t seen in years.  During that time, we have full custody of Yoko the dog. Coordinating last minute details from the beach, though, has been something akin to moving enough supplies to support the invasion of a small country.

Because we’re gone, Yoko needed to stay with someone for respite care. A friend who’s been in love with him since adoption offered to take him home to visit with her husband and their dog (a big loveable boxer named Marley) for the weekend. I suspect that, aside from just a love of a puppy, there’s an ulterior motive here. She’s been campaigning for a small dog to come to their house for a while, and this is a chance to show her hubby how adorable they really are.

Given the photos that have already been swapped via phone, it appears that the puppy invasion is going to work.

Prisoner exchange had to be coordinated, though, which is one of those events that makes you appreciate the fact that your kids can drive. Jordan picked Yoko up at the house promptly at 4:00 on Friday afternoon along with his overnight bag (which I packed, too -- did I mention that I'm in charge of packing?) and carried him to the hospital, where he was offloaded and went to Morganton for the weekend. The only thing he didn’t seem to appreciate is that he was riding in his crate rather than seat belted into the front seat. Getting him into the seatbelt harness and then attached to the seatbelt takes considerable experience and more than one person, so the idea was jettisoned in favor of the crate, which was going as his crib anyhow.

The trauma of being without Yoko lead to no less than 5 tearful telephone calls from his daddy. One wonders how he’s going to survive 6 weeks without the dog, but the issue was apparently not that he was gone, but rather that he was with a stranger. That will resolve once we’re back home.

The next issue was to get him to the airport to load onto the Hickory Hop (the shuttle van between the Hickory Airport and the Charlotte Airport) by 6:00 on Saturday morning.

Step up the next child, who’s been working in the hospital cafeteria all summer and is used to a shift that starts at 5:00 in the morning. Alarms went off in our Myrtle Beach suite at 4:30 in the morning, text messages and telephone calls were exchanged and we confirmed that the passenger was up – having slept fitfully worrying not about the plane but about the dog – and Taylor was on his way to the house to load the luggage and drop him at the airport.

When the issue of worries about the dog came up AGAIN, Taylor told him to, “Just get over it,” which was apparently sufficient.

Out of the mouths of babes . . . .

So Eliseo is now off on his big adventure. Cell phones are wonderful, when they’re not a curse. He’s got a squeaky new one that he’s practiced operating for a couple of weeks, and Verizon coverage will go over most of the places that he’ll be so we can help with anything that’ll may up, although most everything has been anticipated, booked and paid for online. He’s got notebooks for different aspects of the trip that outline where he’s supposed to be, contact points and individuals and activities he’s anticipating.

Maybe the “village” concept doesn’t end when a person is grown. It just goes into hiatus until we’re old enough that the village, which is by then composed of different people included in your family of choice, steps up again to see that a person is warm and fed and clothed.

And maybe gets to go on a fantastic trip so there are great memories and stories and pictures once the body won’t make those trips any more.