It was a cold morning, and I was alone in the car when the
call came the first time. It was my mom calling, telling me
that I needed to come as quickly as possible because my dad’s condition was
getting worse.
It was on another cold morning just over two years later when the call came the second time, and I
was alone in the kitchen of my house when I answered the phone and heard that I needed to come. But this time it was my
brother-in-law David, calling to tell me that my sister Nancy was in labor, news that I was so happy and excited to hear.
Looking back to the time just before the first call, I was expecting the call to come at some point, although on some level I
believed that there could be another outcome, better news coming instead or at
least the bad news being delayed for a long time. The second time, though, I knew the call was
coming soon, and I had been eagerly awaiting hearing the words at the other end of the line. We would be gaining a new
member of the family this time.
Both times when the calls came, I dropped what I was doing
and frantically packed a suitcase. Both
times, as I backed out of the driveway, I promised to my husband that I would keep him posted about what was going on after I’d gotten there. Both times as soon as I'd gotten on the road, I called my sister Jennifer to
talk to her about her plans for travel from where she was in California, and
then I drove in silence while so many thoughts and emotions ran through my head
that I finally had to turn on some music.
When Jennifer gave me her flight information after the second call, we both realized that the
departure and arrival times of her flight that day were identical to those after the
first time the call had come. And we both
knew that she would again be racing the clock to get there in time, with none of us having any control over whether or not she would make it there soon enough.
Both times after I’d started my
drive along the same route, I struggled to control the panic I felt rising up
in my chest. Both times, I felt
desperate to talk to the person about whom the call had been made: the first time,
my dad, and the second time, Nancy. I wanted to call one of the people already there but knew my call would be intrusive in the midst of what was happening there. Both
times I knew that there would be little to nothing I could do to make things any better, and yet both times I felt an almost indescribably
pressing need to get there, a magnetic force pulling me east along the
interstate. As I drove, I thought about
how odd it was that that particular day was just a regular day for the people
in other vehicles I was passing along the road.
I stopped for gas along the way both times, and, as the fuel pumped into the car, I texted others in my family to see what was going
on and to report on my estimated time of arrival.
Both times I called Jennifer again once I got back on the road, and we
talked about what we thought would be the quickest way for her to get from the
airport to where I would be when she arrived.
Both times I heard the rising panic in her voice when she talked about having to be cut off from communication with the rest of us while she was in the air, and
both times I assured her that I would take care of things until she could get there and that transportation would be arranged for her by the
time her flight had landed. Both times I
told her that I believed she would make it there in time, and both times I could only
hope that that prediction would hold true.
The first time when the call had come, my destination was my
parents’ house, but the second time it was the hospital, one chosen by
Nancy for her delivery because it was a different hospital from where we had been both times
during my dad’s inpatient stays. Both
times when I arrived, I turned the car off and made myself take a few deep
breaths before I hit the ground running.
Both times I was acutely aware that life for everyone in my family was
about to change.
On both of those days, I considered driving to the airport
to pick up Jennifer when her flight came in but was afraid to leave, and so
both times I asked my aunt to get Jennifer to us as quickly as possible. Both times I remember feeling relieved to be there but at the same time feeling restless, as if I needed to have something to do in the chaos
of what was going on around me. On both
occasions, there was an air of surrealism in the knowledge of what was about to
occur, and both times the room was filled with emotion.
Jennifer swept in with a sense of purpose like I’d seldom
seen before in both cases. Both times I
watched her hug Nancy, David, and my mom, and then when she hugged me I
felt such a sense of relief that she was there with us. There was an intimacy in the room that is
difficult to describe, one that created an odd sense of control in a situation
that we knew could not be controlled.
The second time, the tears we cried were of joy and excitement
and relief; the happiness in the room was like a salve. Again, those of us in the room made phone
calls and sent messages to others who weren’t there, this time with the news of
a new beginning.
