I shouldn’t have been surprised when my Dad called three days after Christmas to ask me how the Stairclimber at their gym works. My parents’ mastery of electronic gadgetry peaked, with some intense practice, with the keyless entry system of their previous car.
The phone call, the first of three that day, came as we were still surfing the breakdown of the buffer zone that parents far removed from their children experience in the immediate days after a Christmas visit. You know how it is; they grow so used to having you around for a few days that anytime after your visit, thanks to the advent of the cell phone, they call with any question or general comment they may have about the world. On this occasion, my dad couldn’t figure out how to increase the resistance on the steps of the Stairclimber.
Fairly involved with work catch-up (read: Solitaire), I scanned my mental parental trouble shooting list and started from step one:
“Have you pressed the On button?”
Pause…huff…pause…
“Yes, and I’ve started climbing the steps, and the lights are on. I hate this machine, but every other one was already tak…”
“Have you tried to adjust the level? Dad, the arrows on the panel. Push the Up arrow button.”
“Aha. Thatta time! Thank you!”
“Have a good day, Dad.”

By way of explaining, the seeds of the buffer zone were planted in February 2005, when my parents drove to Florida under the guise of a respite from another Washington DC winter. It was only on the drive back from Florida, when my parents faxed a contract on a house in Sarasota from a bank in Alabama, that it became evident that their little sojourn was actually a house hunting expedition. My immediate reaction, and those of my brothers I suspect, was to remind Mom and Dad that Florida, in particular Sarasota and neighboring Bradenton, was where old people go to die in relative comfort. The crushing blow, however, was the realization, some moments later, that the leverage for this new retirement retreat would be their beach house in Bethany Beach, a mere two hours from my front door in Alexandria. My parents’ consolation for the injustice of stripping us of future summers at the beach? “Come on down to Florida for Christmas. We’ll fly you and your brother down!”

And so it was on Thursday, December 22, that my younger brother Bob and I arrived some 3 hours early to Reagan National Airport for our flight to Sarasota. It should be noted that Bob and I had both drank considerably the night before. It should also be noted that Bob, who wears contacts that he often doesn’t take out after a night of drinking, looks like a heroin addict in search of his next fix the following morning, i.e. poofy, blood shot eyes, shakes, etc. Our next fix this morning happened to be at the Sam Adams Brewhouse located exactly 30 paces from our gate in the old terminal of the airport. I have a B.A. Baracus-like aversion to flying the same way Michael Jackson has an aversion to sexual contact with adults, so any day of flying always starts with several or 12 beers to take the edge off.
At 25, Bob is still straddling the line between adult and adolescent, so conversations about work and finances are often interrupted by Bob barking “Come eer!” at a girl just loud enough not to be heard, or in one case after seeing a girl drop a quarter at the terminal Starbucks, picking it up, handing it to her and saying “Here’s your quarter, now you can call me.”

A layover in Atlanta took us to the Sam Adams Brewhouse in Terminal C to refuel, followed by a brief pit stop at the Rusty Wallace Bar. As we waited at our gate to board our plane, passengers started grumbling about problems with the aircraft. Drunk on Winter Lagers and diplomacy, I stumbled up to the nice young lady at the gate, who informed me that something was broke in the nose of the plane. This more-than-honest-assessment brought her older supervisor scurrying over, who reminded her less experienced colleague to always tell passengers that they’re “just putting fuel in the plane.” As she said this, the pilot emerged from the jetway, which is always a sure sign that the pilot might still be flying, but it ain’t gonna be that plane. This recent yellow flag (are you enjoying the NASCAR theme to our Atlanta layover?) took us back to Rusty’s joint for one more beer before boarding another plane at the opposite end of the terminal, and on to Florida.

Some Notes About the Visit…

Sarasota is on the Western part of Florida. If you have pulled out a map, this is the side that the Gulf of Mexico is on. I got the feeling when I was down there that people from the East part of Florida came to Sarasota twenty years ago, set up the infrastructure, and now they’re waiting for the settlers to come. Sarasota feels like Jamestown after the first few winters following the Pilgrims’ arrival or a town in Eastern Europe two weeks before the Olympics arrives, with all the townspeople having spent the last 3 years readying the town since being awarded The Games by the IOC. The houses are nestled in various golf communities and all look identical. All of the houses have lanais, which are little patios with small wading pools, shaded by massive bug nets. The effect is that all of these houses look like they are having their backs swallowed by two-story batting cages.
Watching my dad or any man in his mid 60s swing a golf club is a lot like watching young Forrest Gump walk with his leg braces for the first time; jerky and awkward.
Despite their technological deficiencies, we rewarded my mom with one of those Bose Wave music players, and she in turn rewarded my dad with one of those roaming vacuum cleaners that you see at the bottom of swimming pools. This one runs around the house all day, terrorizes the dog, bounces into things, and keeps cleaning-in that order. When we plugged in my mom’s Wave and put on a CD, she got excited like Mrs. Seinfeld when Jerry gave Morty a Pocket Wizard for Christmas. “Yay! Jerry got it open!”
My parents have wireless Internet all over the house for their laptop. This is great, except that they also have an irrational fear that removing the laptop from the study will somehow destroy their computer. Oh, and the Internet wasn’t working by the time we left.

By the time we did leave, I was strangely ready to be back in DC, where the weather matches the holiday season we were celebrating; it’s just hard to get fired up about Christmas and the novelties of the celebration of Christ’s birth when it’s 75 degrees out. It felt decidedly unholy. Bob and I discussed this and other topics as we sat in the Sarasota airport waiting for our flight home. We decided then that given a four hour (!) layover in Atlanta, a Terminal C Bar Crawl was certainly in order. I decided that traveling with Bob was like moving through time and space with a Giant Hormone. In fact, I’m having a matching hat and T-Shirt made for him with a patch embroidered on both that looks like a giant H with sperm tail entrails on the edges.

Back in Atlanta, we went back to Rusty Wallace’s place, visited Sam Adams again, and hit two other spots. Feeling rubbery from all the beer, a visit to the smoker’s lounge seemed only logical. While there, I happened to see a guy with the same book in his lap that I was reading (Doris Goodwin Kearns’ new book about Lincoln, in case you were wondering). I could see he was much further along than me and I pointed at his copy and asked how it was. Yeah, he was deaf but had read my lips. So then we had this disjointed conversation in which I asked if the book gets better b/c I was only on page 78 and he happily affirmed that it did. Seriously, this is the type of shit that happens to me all the time. I was stuck in that awkward situation where I didn’t want to just walk away, but didn’t know what else to talk about with this guy, cause I didn’t know if he was understanding anything I was saying. Bob wasn’t helping, of course, standing there, mouth wide open in amazement, as if I had just knelt down and asked this deaf guy to marry me. So finally I asked him where he is going, and then did the slanted hand moving skyward as if this was sign language for “airline flight,” and saying “have a safe flight” before scurrying away. Why is it people always try to sign with deaf people, even though they don’t have the first clue how to sign? It’s like when you encounter someone who doesn’t speak English, you think they will finally understand if you yell the words at them. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that later in the bar Bob and I debated whether a deaf person should be smoking. I guess I just couldn’t understand how a person could be deaf and a smoker.

You always know you’ve traveled to see your family for the holidays when the only receipts in your wallet for the whole weekend are airport bar receipts…