CITY VOICES
HARVEY
FIRST PERSON
Road trip no escape The room where it happens from real world worries ANNA HILL
JANICE HARVEY
8
WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
O CT O B E R 15 - 21, 2020
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unshine is filtering through what’s left of the leaves outside my home; it’s one of those October days you want to hold onto before fall slips away. Yesterday was an equally gorgeous autumn day, one that begged for a road trip. My teacher pal Dr. Rick and I loaded up his Jeep with snacks and drinks — and masks — and headed off to parts unknown. (Teachers often chum with other teachers. It gives us the chance to rant about administration, kids, parents and contracts. We can make a cup of coffee last four hours swapping tales of injustice, remote teaching frustrations, back-stabbing ambition and poorly hidden romances. In short, when we gather we are every employee lounge in every workplace.) Our goal on a beautiful Saturday was to decompress and explore Western Massachusetts, perhaps crossing the border into New York. Decompress? Fat chance. There isn’t a long enough highway in existence that could allow an informed citizen to flee reality. Decompressing these days is no small task. It wasn’t easy, leaving behind a week that included a wheezy president triumphantly pulling a mask from his coronavirus-infested piehole while doing his best Benito from the White House balcony. Forgetting the fly that won the vice presidential debate wasn’t happening either. But we were determined to leave our worries behind, dammit. In search of an open breakfast joint, we stopped at a diner in Wilbraham. The two men at the counter wore no masks, and one turned out to be the owner. My eggs were undercooked and my home fries were ashen. I’m pretty sure no one has ever said, “Let’s grab some fabulous breakfast in Wilbraham!” — I know I never will. The happy chef statue outside was wearing a mask; too bad the waitress was wearing her mask under her nose. Escaping the chaos that has become the norm became even more difficult as we traveled through towns like Savoy, Charlemont and
Williamstown. We marveled at a handful of geriatrics holding “SENIORS FOR TRUMP” in the town of Lee, as my pulse quickened and my middle finger tried to take on a life of its own. I’m sure the sign holders were unaware of my disapproval, since cluelessness appeared to be their strength. Laughing about Mike Pence’s stubborn fly caused Lady Karma to send two bees from the heavens to vie for our attention. One yellow jacket committed suicide in Dr. Rick’s stout as we attempted to relax outside a New Lebanon, New York, brewery. The bee’s bestie flew down the back of my hoodie. That decompression thing was elusive. Road trips require traveling music, so I dug out some early Robert Palmer — “Sneakin’ Sally Thru the Alley,” before he ruined himself with those lipsticked clones — which we played for a while before giving in to MSNBC and listening with outrage to some Trump nonsense. Volume down, blood pressure up. Then we listened to Joe Biden woo union members in Pennsylvania. This was no way to relax. We gazed at the breathtaking fall foliage of Mt. Greylock, but as we rode along Route 2, we began counting “Biden/Harris” and “Black Lives Matter” lawn signs vs.Trump flags. We let red, white and blue obliterate the beauty of crimson, gold and burnt umber. We were our own worst enemies. I’ve written before about the futility of this uncivil war we are waging, about the toll it’s taking on us all, both physically and mentally. I admit my own part in it. Have I applied my words to my own reactions to the upheaval that dominates our lives? Hardly. I realized that just like everything else that’s been turned upside down by COVID-19 and the reign of DJT, road trips ain’t what they used to be. Normal may be a town in Kentucky, but it’s not a place found along Route 2 in Massachusetts. Frankly, November can’t come soon enough. I keep telling myself that some day I will once again shout: “Hey … is that a corn maze? PULL OVER! I want to buy some gourds and a jug of cider! Ooh! Kettlecorn!”
mother’s ear letting her know we were with her. I remember her slow labored breaths and holding my ’ve only been in there once, own breath as I waited longer and and I was 14 at the time, knee deep into my freshman year of longer after each exhale, listening for her next intake of air. And then high school. Funny how your the next one just never came … “ME”lio-centric view of the uniThe gravity of tears and of the verse changes when you find out moment winning against me in this your grandmother is in a hospital contest of strength. Moving into the bed. She had just returned from a trip corridor to see cousins and an aunt rushing up the hallway, only to find to Florida with my grandfather in they were just a few minutes too the days leading up to the stroke. late — them disappearing through In the month before she had the door. Sharing yet another first attended the funeral of her best with my cousin and best friend — friend, remarking that she hadn’t this initiation unlike all the others been able to get warm since. After weeks in the hospital with — one we never thought about or pined for. an ever present but ever changing An exit without flourishes — guard of Toomeys, I remember without drama. Just the next the family being called to gather breath that never was. The in her room. I see images of my theatrics are for the living as they mother massaging her mom’s feet grapple with the simplest of all and legs over crisp white sheets. I can picture the sunlight streaming truths. Mortality. Loss. Change. I find myself thinking of that through the large windows of this hospital room crowded with mem- day as I learn of other people’s grandparents and relatives isolated bers of our large Catholic family. I in hospital beds — perhaps with remember my sweet uncle at his
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sunlight streaming through windows — but without their family’s touch and comforting words and presence to see them through. I find myself in awe of nurses and end of life care providers who, with grace and compassion, usher the grandparents, the aunts, the moms and dads who were once someone’s son — someone’s daughter — through their impending inevitability. Of those who, daily, are in the room where it happens. Though I have lost others over the years, I have not again been witness to that most human but also most holy of moments. Have mourned without the reassurance of witnessing that quiet last breath, the calm stillness that follows it. But whether I was in the room or not, having been there once, I get to envision that peace for them — the letting go of worldly weights — as they move softly from this room into another. Anna Hill is the lead vocalist for the band Dodeca.
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