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Being Single and Rides to the Airport
For a recent trip to New York, I scheduled the taxi pickup at 5:30 AM. I wouldn’t dream of asking a soul–not even if I had a beloved spouse, or a lover in the first sparks of romance–to drive me to the airport that early. Since I started traveling for business years ago, I’d used up the good will of friends. So I stopped asking, even when the airport favor would have taken place at a reasonable time.
Towards the end of my father’s life, the plane trips to see him in Florida were harrowing. Back at LAX, I would wait in a long taxi line, and then the driver always seemed to need step-by-step instructions to my house, so I couldn’t relax. I would have given a lot for someone I loved with a comfortable sedan, and maybe a happy dog on the seat, wagging her tail when she spotted me outside the baggage claim area, to pick me up.
On that final journey home after my father died, my plane arrived hours late. We just hovered in the air, as if to say the nightmare of my father’s illness and death and packing up his life, would never end. And then the luggage didn’t come. I was desperate to collapse into the arms of a comfortable friend, so I asked for that. I was elated, if elation could be eked out at such a sad time, when my dearest friend William was at the curb, with his fluffy white dog, waiting for me.
(Photo: my beautiful dog, Rose.)
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When this single (by choice) is sick, I will crawl to the bathroom, I will go without chicken noodle soup or that blessed cup of tea because I will not ask for help. I won’t ask for help to hang pictures–they’ll sit for a few months until I get motivated enough to do it myself. But that ride to and from LAX, well that’s when I ask. That’s about the only time I do.
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