Trip to Bowmanville

It’s a grey, dreary, lazy Sunday afternoon. I don’t really feel up to doing anything productive today. I do feel as guilty as hell about that, but not enough to change anything.

Yesterday I took my Mom to visit my Grandparent’s in Bowmanville. I made a promise to my Mother that I would attempt to take her to visit them as often as possible when we made the decision that she would move back to Mississauga to live with me.

Her parent’s are elderly but in very good shape. My Grandpa is 90 and my Grandma is 86 (or 87 or 88, can’t remember). Grandma is not as sharp as she used to be. Grandpa is. That is the problem. He is lonely for conversation with people and Grandma gets perturbed by it, but more on this later.

My mother has a terrible fear of being a passenger in a car. Her anxiety levels are unbelievable and start to elevate when the decision to make a road trip is made. We were taking Sammy (her precious and once the dog I called my own) along for the trip. He hates cars as well. I haven’t decided if my Mom makes him nervous or he makes her nervous. Just imagine what impact that has on me, the chauffeur.

The production of getting ready to leave started early. I had to unload my trunk of the crap left over from my mom’s apartment, the stuff that had to come to my place rather than going into storage, so that we would be able to fit Sammy’s buggy in. Sammy is wheeled in and out of the apartment in a bundle buggy transformed into a Doggie Stroller by placing a plastic crate in the bottom, upside down, a square of plywood on top and a nice plump pillow for his fat little bum.

Unloading the car took two trips. The first one was me with the pushcart, to haul the big jug of water, that I purchased last weekend, up to the apartment. I was alone and had to stop continuously to catch it as it started to slide off the side. I managed to lose it completely on the ride up the elevator and it banged head first into the elevator door just as we approached my floor. The elevator opened and I struggled with it, hopelessly, my ass propped against the doors until I finally gave up and threw the jug off the elevator with the dolly close behind. Once out of the elevator I was able to right it onto the bottom of the cart and balance it all the way down the hall.

I forgot to mention that our intentions were to leave early in the morning. Or should I say, early for me. I usually like to sleep in on the weekend. I don’t think that is unfair, after all, I am up at 5:30 every other day of the week. I did jump in the shower at 8:30 and immediately got ready to leave.

When I walked in the apartment with the jug of water, my mom was busy washing Sammy’s face and brushing the tats out of his hair. I thought to myself how smart of her to make sure the dog looked good to go visit my Grandparent’s and wondered when she was going to throw a comb through her own unruly mop of hair. Rather than risk asking that question, I dropped the jug of water and walked out the door without saying a word. I heard the door open and my Mother call after me when I was down the hall waiting for the elevator to arrive, but decided not to answer, pretending to be on my descent to the parking garage.

The next load required me to transform the dolly into a cart a la "wagon like" so that I could load the two laundry baskets, filled with various items onto it and lug them back upstairs. My mom showed up at the car with our other non-doggie stroller, bundle buggy, just in case I had too much to handle on my own.
We managed to completely clean out the trunk, which left plenty of room for Sammy’s stroller and any other items that he may require on the trip, like his little bed.

Back in the apartment with the last load, I grabbed my purse and started to say goodbye to Melissa. My mother perturbed started to rush around getting herself ready and extol on all the things she had already accomplished that morning just so that she would be ready in time to leave. Again, I wondered how critical fixing Sammy’s hair for the road trip was, but decided these thoughts were best left unspoken.

I looked at the clock. 11:15am. Early. Yes, well the thought is what counts, isn’t it?

"Mom, you take him downstairs so that he can relieve himself, while I get the car and I’ll pick you up out the back."

"Ok."

"Do we have any eggs?"

"I don’t know Melissa, look in the fridge."

"I guess you don’t have time to bring some up from the store before you go do you?"

My look gave her the answer, but just to be sure I said "NO".

My mom, Sammy and I left the apartment and headed down the hall. I overheard my Mom tell Sammy that she was happy that she was taking him outside because that way she could have a quick cigarette before getting into the nasty car, where her nasty daughter doesn’t let her smoke.
I ignored that comment and decided to myself, that yes I did have time to buy some eggs in our convenience store, located on my parking level and run them back up to Melissa.

A little while later, perhaps 7 minutes, I drove up the driveway to gather my passengers and could see my mother parked on a small retaining wall waiting impatiently for me to arrive. The look on her face indicated that she was ready for an afternoon nap. I wasn’t going to let her get away with backing out of the trip.

I did hear about how late it was as we drove away though. Of course, this would be my fault, for getting Melissa some eggs and taking them up to her. It had nothing to do with fussing over the dog’s appearance for his trip to Grandpa’s.
I explained that my clock in the car is set fast and rather than being 11:45 it was really only 11:30. That’s my trick to getting to work on time each day. Doesn’t always work, because I usually remember that the clock is set fast. :o)

The drive was pretty quiet until I got onto the ramp from the 410 to the 407. The sign says 70 km per hour. I was doing 100 km. Still fairly slow to me. If I had been driving alone, I could have made that curve at 120 or 130 km easy. But I was driving differently, acknowledging my Mother’s fear and trying to be as slow and easy I could. In fact, I was even driving a different route than I would normally take. Rather than attempting the trip on the busy, fast, hair raising 401, I opted for the more expensive, less driven route of the 407. Most people will refuse to drive on it because of the expensive tolls so the trip is not as horrendous as trying to negotiate your way between cars and transports, all driving far too fast on lanes that are narrow from construction or pot hole riddled from ill repair.

It was a nice, boring and uneventful trip. There is a junction however, where the money-pit highway ends and you have to travel south to catch up with the 401 again. At this point, on the other side of Toronto, the 401 is not as busy as when you are travelling through the core. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the erratic cries and screaming. These are part of the deal when you drive a fearful passenger. The sound effects make you want to swerve head-on into the guard rails to miss whatever it is that you haven’t seen. Luckily I have enough experience with my mother’s antics to realise that whatever it is that caused her to yell or scream out, is really nothing worth losing your life over. Most likely some asshole driving in the lane two over from you, decided to change lanes to exit the highway or move around a slower moving vehicle than ours.

It was almost serendipitous when we arrived at the end of the 407 only to see that we were unable to turn South. A Police car had the road south blocked. Our only option was to continue, straight ahead on highway 7. A two lane, black top that winds through little communities through the countryside.

I forgot that my Mother is nervous on two lane highways as well. There was nothing I could do though, we were on a road trip and part of the deal with a road trip is that you have to drive, in something. The something just happened to be my car.

We did arrive alive, finally after stopping briefly to say hello to her ex-husband Stew in Whitby, and my uncle Carl and Fiena on the outskirts of Bowmanville. It was only 2:30pm. Not bad. An hour and a half trip turned into 3. Not only was I tired, but I was very hungry.

Grandma and Grandpa were mostly happy to see us. At least for about the first hour. After the first hour, the conversation starts to dwindle while everyone thinks of something to talk about. We usually spend a good part of it discussing how my Grandma can’t hear anything because her hearing aids aren’t working properly. One needs a new battery and the other one that does have a battery doesn’t appear to be turned on. We know this by the vacant look on Grandma’s face during the conversation and the way she just smiles and nods her head. When she does catch what we are talking about she is very coherent and has intelligent comments to make. That is however, if she can raise her voice above my Grandpa’s. He is usually so anxious for conversation that he talks loudly above the rest and she usually gives up.

I found the whole experience exhausting. Compounded by the Fish and Chips that we bought after our arrival, and I could not keep my eyes open. I did open them when I heard my mom yelling something about me not spilling my pop. My Grandma was concerned when she noticed me sitting in the chair, with a can of pop in my hand and my eyes closed. She was gesturing to my Grandpa that I would spill it. She didn’t know that I had already drained it earlier, but just didn’t have the energy to pull myself out of the chair and put it in the garbage.

They convinced me to lay down on Grandma’s bed and have a nap and so I did. I easily drifted off into a deep sleep while the voices of my Mom and Grandpa droned on and on and on. An hour later, I felt like a new person. Ready to tackle the drive home. I made the announcement and the preparations for the return trip began. Soon we were travelling west. The trip home was only an hour and a half. In spite of my mother’s nervousness we neither encountered any close calls or became a statistic. I don’t really feel like doing anything at all today though. Not sure why.