Nows and Forevers

Interesting day to be at Newark-Liberty International Airport. I drove my stepmother from Pennsylvania to Newark for a flight to Europe. Twenty-nine years ago this morning, my dad drove me here from Connecticut so I could go visit my mom, who was dying of cancer. It would be the last time I saw her.

It was a bitter cold morning, Boxing Day 1993. Dad got up super early and picked me up, and we drove about 60 minutes to Newark. It was the first time I had ever flown out of there and my first time in an airplane in 10 years. The flight had only a handful of people and I sort of just wrote in my journal and didn’t look out the window or care much about what was going on. I landed, picked up my rental car at O’Hare, then drove another hour to see Mom.

I don’t like to remember that visit. I spent the whole week and a few days crying, near tears or coming to grips that I was going to lose my mom and soon.

Turned out she died less than two weeks later, a few hours before I was to see her again.

I was a poor journalist then and I couldn’t afford the flight to Chicago. So my paternal grandmother and my paternal aunt gave me the money for the flight, which was $600 more than I had to my name. Dad gave me the money for the rental car. I owe them a lot for making sure I could see Mom, as devastating as it was.

Came back a week or so later in an epic blizzard. Flew out of Newark a bunch of times when I lived in New York but only via train, bus or Super Shuttle. Melissa and I went there one time, since we liked watching airplanes and then I picked up my sister there on another snowy night in 2005. Both visits were relatively short.

But this one was the shortest. It took no time at all to drop my stepmother off and then head to the next destination. Leaving me with remembering the first trip, 29 years ago. I didn’t really want to.