I Instinctively Fought Her

We listened to BTS for the first forty-five minutes on the way down.  It’s a ninety-minute drive to Newark Airport.  The second half of the ride was mine.  Leaving at 5:30AM, pitch dark, neither of us was very communicative.  I’ve now heard the new BTS album “Map of the Soul 7” many dozens of times and I don’t have any more lines of inquiry to pursue with this topic. I pull up to the Sunoco Station.  There’s a sign saying the card swipe isn’t working and to pay inside, so I spin the car around to another pump. 

My younger daughter is trying to understand just when it was we “already” crossed into the state of New Jersey, when her sister called.  Her plane landed thirty minutes early.  “Find a coffee shop.  We’ll be there at 7:00AM in thirty-minutes.  I had on a “Roots of OK Jazz” album with some tinny, Congolese rhumba to sooth me as a navigated the latter part of our ride, through the Garden State Parkway. 

Newark was, of course, less crowded than usual.  Roadside parking aggressive and selfish, as always.  There she is with her mask on and her two enormous suitcases.  These bags were well over fifty pounds each and I lugged them up into back of the Highlander, closed the door and sped back up to New Paltz.  Her school waited longer than many to close.  Her friends all told her, “you called it accurately.”

There is a truck stop, not long after you leave 17 and get on the New York State Throughway and my younger one was clamoring for me to stop to get something to eat. I sat there among all the eighteen wheelers after failing to find a place to park.  The girls went in to get some drinks at Starbucks and I thumbed through the Spotify library and thought to put on D’Angelo’s “Black Messiah,”, which sounded great until I got antsy at having a third song begin without any of these ladies back in the car.  Where were they?  I put on Jeroge Bem, impulsively and still they didn’t come.  Amazing how quickly and thoroughly I lost my cool.  I called them both.  No reply.  They finally showed and said it was a long line.  Which didn’t quite add up.  I didn’t even get my Starbucks espresso but had to settle for a Dunkin Doughnuts version instead.

On the way up the little one said she wanted to put on a tune and I instinctively fought her.  It was my turn.  But she hinted that it was something I’d like and it was.  She was correct.  Eight years or so back I’d gotten one hundred or more female acts from the last hundred years, for them to consider.   One they definitely loved was the Runaways “Cherry Bomb” and we all enjoyed cranking it up loudly as we sped out of the truck stop.  “Hello Daddy, Hello Mom.”



Monday 03/16/19