The new address is 301 Park Avenue

I started out my day with coffee, Cheyene, a tennis ball and a swimming pool. Six hours later, my mother, my friend, Sharon, and I would hopefully be at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. I haven’t mentioned anything here about these plans because I wasn’t at all sure it was going to happen, and it almost didn’t. Getting my friend to say anything nice about George Bush is more probable than getting my mother to get out of bed at 8:00 in the morning. With our flight scheduled to leave at 10:50, at 9:15, Mom was just getting up and by that I mean sitting up in her bed and telling me that she was tired. My niece sat upstairs keeping company with the internet and giggling at my panic when I’d say to her, I don’t think Mom is going to make this trip, and then yell downstairs, Mother PLEASE get up. To which Mom would groggily reply, I just need one minute more.

She did get up though, and we left the house at 9:46 - plenty of time if I can drive 85 mph the entire way. When we arrived at Departures, Sharon stood waiting for us with a Sky Cap, a wheelchair, and somehow our printed boarding passes and luggage claim checks for our as yet to be checked luggage. That alone was worth ten bucks on the spot. It’s 10:30 and our flight leaves in 20 minutes. As Sharon jumps in my car to park it, she heroically says, Don’t worry. If I miss this flight, I’ll catch the next. It was a scene from a movie, though I don’t know what one or if it’s really in a movie, but it should be.

In one of those 12-seater golf carts, Mom and I were driven to Gate E16 which just happened to be in Terminal E and not Terminal C which is where you check in for Continental domestic flights, and which is about five miles away and exactly how it should be when you’re in a hurry and only have 20 minutes before your flight leaves and one of your group is circling the airport in your car looking for a place to park.

When we got to our gate, I asked the attendant if Sharon had already boarded. She raised an eyebrow at me and said, No, is she planning on coming? This plane will be leaving soon. As we wheeled Mom down the jet way, I called Sharon. She was breathing heavy and I could hear her footsteps running, I’m at Gate 10! As Mom got out of the wheelchair at the end of the jet way, I asked the attendant to tell the gate agent that Sharon was at Gate 10 and to please wait for her. Having been with us the whole time, he smiled a smile that said he believed in us and we could make it happen.

From that point on, all we could do was hope.

Just as Mom and I got settled in our seats, here comes Sharon, the last one on the flight, sweat pouring from her brow, an ear-to-ear grin spread across her face. We made it. And really, that’s how I like it: No time to spare, walk right onto the flight, sit down and go.