Memorial Marathon

The days from the 18th to the 27th of April are a bit of a blur, having been spent predominantly in a fog of illness (ok, it was just a cold, but it was a bad cold) and Jetlag. The marathon started with an early morning trip to Gatwick to catch an AirTransat flight to Toronto. Now, AirTransat may be cheap, but this comes at the expense of a considerable amount of comfort. Its like being crammed into a sardine can (as Doug puts it) for 7 hours and fifteen minutes. It wasn't all bad, though. Our route took us over Labrador, into the gulf of Saint Lawrence and the sky was clear the whole way. It was gorgeous and, best of all, with my trusty GPS, I knew exactly what I was looking at. Every lake and every little town. The North American base map was quite detailed.

WARNING: This post is in the form "The next day we...". It conveys the complex logistics of this trip, but is probably also boring.

Landed at about 3 in the afternoon, was once again struck by the relative efficiency of Canadian airports and met my sister, her friend Marilyn and my new nephew Ben(!!) about an hour later. He seemed to have liked his flight. Very smiley. Together we headed up to my (paternal) grandparents for dinner. Oh, and on the way I ended a dark and disturbing six months drought by getting a Timmies. Marie and Anne (inlaws - mother and sister) joined us for dinner and then took me back to their place to 'sleep' and pick up the car. I say 'sleep' because I was jetlagged and, despite the fact that when my head hit the pillow I had been up for 23hours straight, I only managed about 4 hours. Not helpful to the immune system which, at this point was starting to lose the battle.

From the inlaws, I drove back to my Grandparents to pick up my sister and we were off to my mom's place in Ottawa. Because we were meeting a friend of Hannah's in Peterborough, we took the much slower Hwy 7 way. Between the break in Peterborough and 'feed stops' for Ben, we managed to make it to Ottawa in about 8 hours. There we had an open house for Hannah's Ottawa friends. I managed to eat a bit and even managed about an hour of chatting before the hallucinations and the (I think very wise) decision to got to bed. It's important to mention that, on the phone that evening, Jane suggested that I should take some meds to keep the cold from preventing me from sleeping. I decided to tough it out.

The next day I felt like bag (Jim Brokenshire, 2001). If you're wondering what that means, imagine a bag. A big, crap filled bag. I took some aspirin and caffeine (in the form of a strong coffee) and was in short order bright eyed and bushy tailed enough to help get the van. We had to rent a van to drive down to the memorial because my mom was bringing a big (and it turns out very heavy), antique desk back with us. We were prepared for a long Haul - Ben isn't one of those babies that it automatically knocked out in the car. And he can't get enough of the breast at the moment. So getting most of the way down took about 10 hrs.

The next day was the memorial. We made it to Kendall in good time for the service, which went off without a hitch. There were plenty of relatives that I hadn't seen in a very long time. We figure there were about 200 people there, and all were able to reminisce about Maga either publicly or privately. The main themes seemed to be music (my grandparents were the first family of chamber music in Belmont), nursing (Maga was a registered nurse and organized home care for the elderly and shut-ins after my grandpa died) and girl scouts (before I knew her, Maga was heavily involved in Girl Scouts of America). Chamber music was played, rounds and madrigals were sung and speeches were made. I had been responsible for the printed program , and that seemed to be a big hit, though we didn't have quite enough of them on account of the unexpectedly large crowd.

That night, Hannah stayed at Kendal with a ride to Phillidelphia the next day to catch a flight home. My mom and I went to stay with some cousins (second once removed, I think) in Princeton, NJ. These guys were extremely fun, interesting, and they have seemingly uncovered the fountain of youth. The 'matriarch' was Aunt Ada Mae, who is 93, but doesn't look a day over 70 and sharp as a whip. She was the source of many a story about my Grandparents in their early lives and during the war. Her three sons were there: George (a writer for Bloombergs turned corporate headhunter) was our co-host (along with his wife Susan), Frank and Sam (who I think is the eldest, but it's hard to tell since they are all over sixty and look under 40... seriously). Her Daughter, Ada?, was also there. This was the one time in the entire trip that I slept in the same place for two nights straight.

The next day, we loaded up the van with stuff being passed on to my mom including the aforementioned giant, heavy desk. We hung around a bit (marking the first time we hadn't been running around like mad) and spending the next day traveling back to Ottawa. After that, there was the simple matter of getting the big huge (and have I mentioned freakishly heavy?) desk up two narrow awkward flights of stairs at my mom's. This was managed, with Julian's (mom's roomate's son) help, and I only threw my back out once! I was consoled with a birthday dinner with my favorite birthday menu, teriaki chicken, sower kraut and noodles. For those of you who have not yet experienced this taste combination, I tell you, you have not lived.

That evening I bid adieu to my mom and Ottawa and went to visit Mira and Nick in Kingston. To make a long story short, a good time was had by all and goodies were exchanged (Mira and I share a birthday) including chocolate. Then back to the inlaws on the 25th (actually my birthday) after a very pleasant brunch at Cora's. After a second birthday dinner at Sweet and Spicy, and having received more goodies, I hopped back on the plane for the long ride home... and T - 1 month till we're back in North America for good!