Home at last, critters and all
The Kentucky eight have landed!
For the past week, I’ve been tracking the eastward progress of my son and his fiancée as they made the 2,200-mile drive from Los Angeles to Lexington. My son began a new job there about a month ago, and as new jobs go, he went ahead first to get settled while his fiancée stayed back in California to finish her job and pack things up.
A week ago he flew west to help with the packing; a few days later, the two of them got into the car and started the drive. I say two, but there were eight hitting the highway: two humans and six beloved others.
In the car were: son behind the wheel and fiancée next to him. And then enjoying the drive from various places in the back: Sully, Fenna, Gravy, Huckleberry, Velcro and Midge. The kids drove east with a menagerie. No, wait – better yet, an ark. Two by two they came, these grandcritters of mine.
Sully and Fenna are cats. Although I’ve never met them in person, we’ve been introduced on Facetime and they are a lot. Each time I spoke to the kids during the trip, the cats were in their keepers, to prevent them from bouncing around the car and harassing the others.
Which brings us to: Gravy and Huckleberry, the tarantulas. I’m not making this up – the kids have pet tarantulas. Again, I have not met them in person, but I’m told they are soft and lovable and also hungry. Sometimes I send the kids a bit of money for the freeze-dried cricket budget. Gravy and Huckleberry rode in a tank in the back seat, probably talking smack about the cats the whole time, a behavior you would never find with:
Velcro and Midge, the family frogs. I pointed out that Midge was the name of the first Barbie doll to be pregnant, and that Velcro is a licensed brand name (like Kleenex or Zamboni) and that they should have named him Hook-and-Loop to avoid a nasty lawsuit. The frogs rode in their aquarium tanks in the way back, probably getting car sick as tends to happen when riding in the back.
“What did you do with everybody when you pulled into a hotel for the night?” I asked.
“We took everybody in with us,” my son said, which was the humane thing to do, given the heat as they traversed the desert.
“It was 110 degrees in Death Valley,” they said. I suppose that Gravy and Huckleberry could handle that, but not the rest of them. Each time we spoke, I reminded them to stay hydrated, to pull over when tired, to keep me posted on their progress through all those square states in the middle.
The vibe of the trip was the rampant joy of their all being together again after more than a month apart. There’s something so dazzling about starting a new life in a new place. My son couldn’t wait to show her the house he’d rented, the place where he works, the fishing lakes nearby – all of it.
When I spoke to them on Wednesday, they were hoping to cover the last 11 hours in one day and arrive at their new home that night. I told them not to push it, but I knew they would. They wanted to get there.
Yesterday morning came the text.
“We made it home late last night!”
I sighed a big sigh of relief, for my kids and all my many grandcritters had arrived safely. Home at last, all eight of them.