In the morning we woke up to find Courtney had already left for Janine’s. She’d gone with Remo, of course. Remo wasn’t exactly what I’d call a morning person, but he had a kind of fortitude for keeping a daytime schedule that I just didn’t seem to have. Maybe it was related to the whole […]
Court had her own room at the motel. Now that Christmas was like a week away the place had emptied out, so there were plenty of vacancies. I said good night to her at her door and said I’d see her in the morning to head over to Janine’s. Ziggy was waiting up for me, […]
“What do you mean, ‘we‘ go to church’?” Courtney had arrived at the airport after multiple delays due to ice storms back east and other weather shenanigans. Remo had left Ziggy at Janine’s to keep Claire company, and had left me at the airport to pick up a rental car of my own while he […]
Later that week we had a tree-trimming party. I don’t actually remember ever having a “party” to do it before. When I was a kid I’m pretty sure that getting the tree up and decorated was a big chore that various family members were drafted into. Or maybe Claire always considered that to be a […]
Remo drove me and Ziggy to look for a Christmas tree. We ended up at some farm where Remo did all the talking. Once the tree was tied to the roof, we got back in the car and Remo was chuckling. “What’s so funny?” I had to ask.
(Sorry for the late post! I tried to do it last night from the train to NYC but the wifi wouldn’t work. I arrived in the city at 3am, and when I got to where I’m crashing I fell asleep before I got it live. Then this morning we had to rush out to Brooklyn […]
You haven’t felt helpless until you’ve stood outside a door marked Ladies–with your soulmate and the man who raised you–waiting to find out if your mother keeled over and died in a truck stop bathroom stall. I mean, she was probably fine, but…
I don’t know why everything involving my family required a negotiation. Agreeing on who was going in which car to Pizza Hut could be more complicated than the Warsaw Pact. Actually, I do know why: it’s because Claire could never just let anything happen. She had to be managing everything, all the time. When we […]
That night, to avoid tantrums on the part of any of the adults or children in the house, the compromise was that Landon would build a pillow fort in the living room and sleep in there, and I’d tell him a bedtime story. I lay down on the floor partly under the coffee table with […]
Sunday afternoon we got good news from the motel where Remo was staying: they’d have vacancy starting in the morning. Around the time Landon, Ziggy, and me were doing our best to eat the rest of the donuts (while they were still fresh, of course), Janine started making noise about Landon needing to sleep in […]