Short but sweet reunion
Somewhere around the 300 mile point, things shifted.
The road trip, until then quiet and monotonous, had taken on a faster, more jagged feel. The Pennsylvania Turnpike, with its three lanes and mostly polite drivers, gave way to four lanes and rattling jalopies whizzing by. I was escorted into New Jersey by a 1970s sedan I swear was held together with duct tape, its driver careening between huge tractor rigs with a recklessness that brought a cringe.
“I’m never going to see him,” I said to myself as I leaned forward and hit the gas to move away from a speeding 18-wheeler.
I was driving east to see my son. It would be our first time together since Christmas of 2019, an eternity. Those last 40 miles would be the longest – in that way the last moments before any reward always pass more slowly.
My son, who is 26, lives and works in Los Angeles. Because of the pandemic, air travel hasn’t been an option, leaving all those square, midwestern states blocking the path between him and me. Yes, we FaceTime every week, and talk and text a lot, but nothing has seemed quite right with me since I last saw him.
He was in New Jersey for work on a television film shoot, 362 miles and just a day’s drive away. He would have free time on Sunday, and so we would meet.
I waited for him in the parking lot of a grocery store, midway between his hotel and mine. (The last thing an up-and-coming producer and cameraman needs is his mommy lurking on the set.) How would he look? I’d seen him many dozens of times on a phone screen, but that’s not the same.
He pulled up in the film crew’s grip van; walked over; bear hug for a long time. Same warm body, same twinkly blue eyes, same froggy voice.
“Hi, Momma,” he said. That’s the way he spelled it in the texts he sent. Not Mama, but Momma.
As we walked across the parking lot to get a coffee, he grabbed and held my hand. His was warm and rough. I wanted to tell him to use hand cream, but I’d vowed not to nag.
He spilled forth with the stories of his life, all those months worth.
“I forgot to tell you, I got a promotion,” he said.
“You buried the lead,” I said. I sat and sipped my coffee while he talked, carving big conversational loops in the space between us, stopping only once in a while to take a sip of his tea.
We had only three hours to spend before he had to get back to work. Over an early dinner at an Italian restaurant, he kept talking, stopping only for bites of pasta and to chat up our waiter, a dead ringer for the actor Jon Voigt. My son is nice to everybody – always has been.
One by one, I fought off urges to mother him: get to the dentist, eat more vegetables, wear your mask on the plane home. I needed to say those things more than he needed to hear them.
He’d weathered the pandemic without me. I was pretty sure he would, but I needed to see for myself. As we said goodbye, I thought about how mothers don’t do so well when they can’t be with their kids. I didn’t say that out loud, though.
“I know, Momma,” he said, because he already knew. “I missed you, too.”
“Be careful driving around here,” I said as I got back into the car. He gave a little smirk at my nagging. Sometimes a momma can’t help it.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com/.