Trip to Florida to See Great, Great Grandmother Lucille

My great grandmother Lucille has always been one of the bright spots in our family. Her sunny personality and humor made spending time with her a treat. One summer, she came to stay with me while my folks worked. It was one of the best summers ever. She greeted you each morning with "Good morning, sunshine". She is now 101 and lives in Milton, Florida.

We received news a few weeks back that Lucille's health was starting to decline. After having a bought with tongue cancer that couldn't be operated on and no longer being able to swallow pain medication, she was starting to lose weight. We had to go see her. Sasha had to meet this incredible woman before she left us. Ugh ... another plane trip.

So ... we made our reservations to coincide with Nathan's business trip to Jacksonville. Now, for those of you familar with Floridean geography, you might be thinking, "wow, Jacksonville doesn't seem that close to Milton". And, you would certainly be right!

Nathan's optimism is always present. We would break up the trip by geocaching our way to Milton. It sounded like a plan.

The plane ride down was ... another plane ride. The flight, I'm sure because Nathan planned it that way, had a series of two seats on each side of the aisle. Of course you know where Sasha had to sit -with 'Mama'. Nathan lucked out by getting a seat a few rows ahead of us where he could pretend he didn't know 'the woman with the screaming, ill-behaved toddler'.

We did okay during take off, and brilliantly while Little Einsteins entertained him during the flight but it was hard explaining why we had to turn them off on during landing. I did my best to explain that the pilot would be mad at us if we had a DVD player and that it could cause some problem with the plane. Sasha didn't care. He screamed and pitched a fit until we landed where I could distract him by asking if he could see other planes, the runway, grass, sky, etc. I was exhausted by the time we entered Jacksonville airport amidst the hostile stares of the passengers who sat around us. I did apologize to folks using the overused excuse "I'm so sorry, he's two" (which I expect to keep using for years to come by just changing his age).

We spent two days holed up in the Jacksonville Embassy Suites while a tropical storm made a visit to the area. Just FYI - a two year old captive in a hotel room isn't a pretty sight. We broke up the day by visiting the gift shop, searching for the diet pepsi machine, walking the halls, and terrorizing the hotel plants. On one visit to the gift shop, Sasha picked out a Minnie Mouse purse that he liked. I suggested that a cute, little blue dolphin might be better. We started working on his name and finally thought that Finn would be appropriate. Finn turned into 'Bean' and so now Sasha has a little dolphin named 'Bean' that he carries with him everywhere.

We got a chance to meet up with a colleague of Nathan's, Val, and his lovely wife, Julie, for dinner at Chili's one night. The waitress asked us for our drink order and we selected beers. She told us it was happy hour and did we want to split it? "Split a beer", I thought? Are you kidding? I asked how big the beers were and she made a gesture indicating that they were normal sized beers. "Yes, I'd like my own beer", I confirmed still wondering why Florideans wouldn't be able to consume a full beer on their own. As she brought the four beers to our table, it finally hit - Florida has 2 for 1 happy hours! Silly me.

Julie herself was adopted and her tale of adoption could rival any daytime soap opera. She is the mother of three girls and is totally a 'hot mama'. I say this with much admiration as I find with only one child I can barely find time to brush my teeth or hair much less look awesome. There are days when my best friend is the pony tail looper, a hair clip and I'm lucky to get a fresh coat of deoderant on. Julie doesn't seem to have this problem. My hat (ooh .. another good option for my lack of personal hygiene time) goes off to her.

After two days captive in the hotel, a long car ride wasn't what Sasha and I wanted. Loaded up with a DVD player and every Little Einstein ever made, we set out for Milton. This journey was supposed to take us five hours. The journey itself was more like eight or nine by the time we got to the hotel. Why you ask? Well .. things go considerably slower when you have to stop at every exit along I-10 to look for a geocache. Now, Nathan reminds me that I did agree to the geocaching idea but at some point, I was 'done'. I think that point came just west of Jacksonville.

Mom and Dad decided to meet us in Milton so they could go to the nursing home with us. I was a little nervous - would she still remember me? would she be good to Sasha? would she remember any of us? My grandmother met us at the home and we headed towards Lucille's room. Despite the best efforts of the staff, I always get sad at the nursing home. There are always elderly people lined up in the halls in wheelchairs with no place to go. Occasionally you'll see another family coming to visit their loved one but, for the most part, the place consists of patients and staff. It makes me think about how the end of my life will be and makes me wonder, "do we really want to live to be 101"? If our body is working fine but our mind is gone, do we still want to be alive? I remember coming to get Lucille ready for her 100th birthday party and someone mentioning that it was her birthday and she was 100. Her eyes got wet with tears as she said, "why am I still here"?

In Lucille's room, we saw a glimmer of recognition cross her face. Her biggest reaction was to Nathan as he entered the room her eyes got big (she has always thought he was a "good looking man" and her fondness for his hair is legendary. She actually asked him to bend his head at one family dinner so she could feel his head; a moment that still makes Nathan blush when reminded of it). Sasha got up and gave her a 'smoochie'.

We spent some time with her in the lobby where she watched Sasha run, get up on the chair, get down on the chair and repeat a million times. She ate the cream filling out of the two Boston Cream donuts that I brought her. Even though I had been told that she wasn't eating, I always brought her these donuts and couldn't bring myself to believe that she wouldn't want them. Perhaps she ate them to spare my feelings, but she seemed to enjoy the sweet, creaminess of the filling.

We took some photos and thanked God that she was having a good day. We knew that this would be our last time with Lucille. She was the last of her era, she was an extraordinary woman and someone we'll spend the rest of our lives being thankful that we knew.

Our drive back to Jacksonville was 'speedy' in comparison to our drive over. We only stopped for two caches (under the threat of death) before getting to the airport. We spent a couple of hours in the airport and I had contemplated the wisdom of getting Sasha up early, riding in the card four hours, spending two hours in the airport followed by a plane ride. I will tell you, never again.

Our plane trip back was even more exciting the our plane ride down. Once again, Nathan managed to get seated in a separate row from us and, once again, Sasha proclaimed that he had to sit with 'Mama'.

I had just turned the DVD on when I saw the scariest thing imaginable. The wing falling off the plane? The engine malfunctioning? A man with bubonic plague trying to share his fleas? No, scarier. MUCH scarier. The red battery light came on! OH NO! We weren't going to have something to keep Sasha occupied to Chicago??? Remembering that Sasha cared little about the pilot's happiness or whether the plane stayed aloft, I told him that the little light meant that the Little Einsteins had to go night-night. When the player finally gave up, Sasha told the machine "Night-night". He didn't fuss at all about the departure of his little friends. He didn't pitch a fit until he figured out that nothing else was going to come on.

I'll tell you that spending three hours on a plane with no extra toys (we had packed them since he could watch his DVDs) is a real parenting test. How many times can you bring the window shade up and down before it breaks? How many things can you pitch before you actually hit someone? How many times can you go up and down off your chair? How many pretzels (the stewardess felt sorry for me ... "poor exhausted mother traveling all by herself with this bad tempered, toddler") can you eat, toss on the floor, grind into your chair, spit up on Mama? At one point, I was actually searching on the bottom of my bag for fruit treats, candy, anything that would give us another couple of minutes of peace.

Now I'm exhausted and mad at Nathan. Why couldn't he have been the one to have to deal with this? It must be his fault somehow that the DVD player wasn't fully charged for the flight. How come he got to have two flights where he slept the whole way. Yes, he slept! The least he could've done to make me feel better was to break out his laptop and work or pretend like he was working or something.

No more flights ... no more flights ... no more flights.