I buy tickets to go to Oregon. Mom and I talk over the phone and it’s a good talk and we plan on going. I buy 2 others, one for Brian and one for another person just in case.
The plane leaves at 3:30. I get to the airport an hour early. There is a sense of well-being and relaxed agency.
Then, mom doesn’t show up. In what seems a matter of minutes, instead of being an hour early, I’m am an hour late. The tickets are no good. I’m driving out of the airport.
Are there eight tickets or four? I finger through four folds of tickets with two studs per fold. No, the tickets are in two parts each; so, there are four tickets. That’s good, because I’d be even more upset if I ended up wasting eight tickets.
I think briefly about going back to the airport and asking for a refund. It’s a brief thought and it actually seems quite possible.
I drive out of the airport in a fog of emotional upset and quickly arrive into the pleasant offsetting quiet of the suburbs. The children see me speeding down the hill. A police car follows me.
They shrill “ticket, ticket…” all the way down the street. I’m sour-lipped with fear of being punished.
The police car purposively stops in the middle of the T intersection, blocking traffic. I wait a number of minutes looking at the cop car until I realize the radio is broadcasting a bust going on in the house the diagonal right of me and in the street left of me.
I was just scared and guilty for missing the flight; the cop wasn’t after me but focused on the bust. It’s time to get going. I take a right, away from the cop car, onwards.