Charging Station

 I am glad that when crisis hit, I was able to make a few decisions on my own. The words of a flight attendant rang in my ear: "We know you have a lot of choices when you fly..." And those words will be burned into my memory for another little while as I creep toward the reality of my trip to Colorado. 

My mother will soon be moving out of her home. More to the point, my mother will be moved out of her home soon. My younger brother and I will be traveling east of the Rockies to try and help out. Not a lot, but enough that we can tag off on the process and feel like we got last tag on the homestead. 

This is the place where my mother lived for twenty-five years, after the death of my father and the subsequent rejiggering of finances. This is not the place where I grew up, but it is the place where my mother grew old. Old enough that keeping track of that two-floor townhouse even with a lot of help is no longer a possibility. Now, all those memories that had been pared down and moved from my childhood home are being consolidated once again to be moved to somewhere new. 

All of this action came to pass in a bit of a blur, after a fall threw all the cards that had been carefully laid were tossed into the air. Now the "what if" talks have become "how do we" plans. They became real in such a rush that when my younger brother made plans to fly to Colorado and drive back with the artifacts we claim in the name of the middle and youngest sons. My older brother, god bless him, will be left with unraveling the rest. 

Not exactly the equitable vision that we all might have hoped for, but the reality of geography is what we live with. Which is why, when offered a seemingly unbeatable air fare from the Bay Area to Denver, my younger brother and I jumped. And fell directly into the absurdity of Frontier Airlines. In a world that includes Southwest, searching out those low prices can be a dangerous game. Once we had acquired our seats, my brother and I discovered that if we had hoped to carry anything other than our laptops with us, that we were going to be offered the "carry on upgrade." For a fee nearly the price of the ticket, we would be allowed to bring an additional bag. Not a checked bag, but one we could stow in the overhead bins. It''s going to be a short trip, but I still wanted a change of clothes. Sorry, says Frontier, that will cost you extra. 

It's a good thing that we will be driving back, since I have no idea what Frontier Airlines would charge for bringing along mom's china.