We woke to 14-foot-high ceilings in our four-poster at the Lafitte. The outside of the windows, which looked down on Bourbon Street, were drenched with condensation. I tried to take a photo of the street below from our balcony, but the moment I brought out the camera its lens frosted over. We ate biscuits and coffee on the balcony, listening to the sounds of the French Quarter struggling to rise from its nightly hangover. Finally, we noticed the floorboards of the balcony were rotting and falling apart below us, so we took the kids for a run in the penitent streets. We kept just barely ahead of the street-cleaning team’s pressure-wash hoses. Back at the river, we jumped on a trolley, which broke down after about 500 feet in a fenced corridor. The driver left us and went for help. After we and the other 2 moms + 5 kids aboard had had enough of sitting in the glass-walled steam bath, we made a break for it, ushering our little troupe of evacuees as quickly as we could over multiple tracks to the gravel shoulder. We emerged near the ferry building, deciding to ride the broad, flat ferry across the river & back. Suddenly Justin appeared. He had the wild, luminescent look of a writer who is entirely unslept and over-caffeinated. He was also unfed. “I find I can’t eat while I’m writing,” he told us, “it slows me down.” So while Zach and I ordered catfish Po’Boys, Justin nursed the remnants of a stained white mug and laughed with us. The rain was coming down in draperies over the streets, bouncing off lacy awnings and shooting out of gutter pipes. We took this as a sign it was time to head out, and since Justin was still under deadline, we had to set him free.
East along Hwy 10, we crossed swamps, rivers, and bayous and drove on a several-mile bridge over what felt like an ocean. Mississippi and Alabama looked every bit as tropical as Louisiana. It wasn’t until we turned north and headed up towards Georgia that foliage started to change, feeling itself on surer ground. Jonah felt a sudden urge to pee, and when we dove towards the nearest rest station we discovered it held a 15-foot-tall model of a lunar landing module. By chance, we had pulled over at a NASA rocket testing facility that gave tours. We would have loved to stay, but as was we were due to arrive in Atlanta long after dinner, we pressed on. All along our route, hurricaine Alex whipped us with his outer edge of lightening and rain. At times the rain was so thick we could not see where we were going. The raindrops smashing our windshield appeared to be as large as a hampsters. Somewhere along our route in Alabama, Zach felt a powerful desire for a soy mocha. We joked about putting in a request for such a thing at one of the facilities we were passing, such as the local Alabama Woodsmen’s Club. He had to settle for a Yoohoo at the gas station.
A little bit about car life: The Odyssey provided plenty of space for us all to stretch out, but of course the kids’ footwells were still crowded with all the items we had to have at hand – a bag of dry foods, a cooler of cold items, Jonah’s suitcase of toys, an additional bag of books & art supplies, pillows for naps, and a bag of DVDs. In the front was an assortment of cables and the things they plugged into: ipod, three phones, camera, DVD player, and an inverter. The kids did as well as could be hoped keeping busy on the marathon car rides. We stopped giving Zora pens after she decided that decorating her skin and car seat were more fun than using the paper she was provided. Both kids had small bags of rocks they had bought in Zion, and for some time they were entertained trading rocks (this mainly consisted of Jonah convincing Zora to give him all her nicely colored ones, while he passed back the brown ones). At times they consumed books (both figuratively & literally). Every time we entered a new state, we brought out the map on the book our friend Risa had given us and showed the kids where we were. The adult in the front passenger seat worked the hardest, because s/he had to tend almost constantly to the whimsical needs of the driver and the other passengers We learned that Jonah would go almost all afternoon without a nap if left to himself, but if we bribed him, he would fall asleep almost immediately and sleep for 3+ hours. Zora often had to wail a bit before she could settle into sleep, and she never slept quite as long. When awake, she would sometimes beg to unbuckled, then surrender to a pissed-off baby pout. When we had energy, we provided lots of tickling. The kids often played with each other because there was no one else, and it was fun to see the two of them inventing new games they could play together. Tug-of-war with a pillow was popular, and when I finally brought out the animal memory card game that Uncle Joel & Aunt Diane had given us months ago, Jonah passed the cards to Zora one at a time naming the animals to her. Zach and I both got fairly good at changing Zora’s poopy diaper on our laps while in motion. Sometimes it seemed to us that Zora pooped just so she could get out of her seat for awhile.
Atlanta had a lovely skyline, skyscrapers with minarets and features as interesting as any in downtown San Francisco. We reached the stunning home Kimmy and Ched had built in the suburbs (Suwanee) late at night. They were gracious hosts and stayed up to entertain us long after we arrived. The next day the kids re-met their cousins. Jonah and Dalton became fast buddies over descriptions of the various lethal features of Dalton’s toys. Zora and Calvin, who were born only a week apart, had a little more difficulty sharing the “baby” title. Calvin toddled after Zora, perplexed, while Zora grabbed his toys with a “No! Meeeee!” and tried to push him off his own slide. Outside, the kids enjoyed the trampoline and playground set, but the most fun they had was building a dam across the red dirt arroyo, filling it with water and mucking around inside. We hosed them down for lunch and a long nap. In the evening Kimmy made us a several-course meal and the grown-ups had several courses of beer as well. As the kids tossed in the heat of the 2nd floor we sipped wine on the porch, talking and enjoying the presence of well-behaved insects – the pulse of cicadas and the sparkle of lightning bugs – without a single biting one.
Eight hours from Atlanta to Virginia, and we spent the night in the Holiday Inn Express (for the cinnamon rolls, why else?) in Harrisonburg. We were eager to get to Ithaca in time for a party at my parents’ house. We didn’t have time for much sight-seeing, but we did go out for dinner in the downtown and stumbled across a band with a fiddle playing in the town square. The next morning we drove through the Shenandoah valley and everything became much drier until we reached northern Pennsylvania’s mountainous region. We passed at least one mountain whose top had been removed and left as open soil. Otherwise the hills were green all the way from there to Ithaca, and we danced through them with Selena and Manu Chao. When we started seeing quite a number of beautiful old barns, we knew we were close. Zora woke just before we arrived ("Gamma house?") and became very excited, pointing and exclaiming in Spanish "Aka!Aka!".
We had finally arrived in Ithaca!! Rounds of hugs, exclamations from my parents over the large red minivan, Jonah wanting to strip off his clothes and run straight into the pond for a swim. We took a moment to breathe and then headed off to a party for the 50th birthday of the man who filled my father's position at the University of Ornithology when he retired last year. The party was in a beautiful old house with soft wood plank floors and a big lawn. We played croquet and badminton, enjoyed the "help yourself" bar, and Zora made friends feeding a big sandy lab who followed her devotedly the rest of the party. There was even a little music, with my father's former grad student Jeff on dobro, a couple of guitars, and my mother and I taking turns on her fiddle.
Spent the next day skinnydipping in the pond with all the kids' pool toys and sipping whisky (you have to drink plenty of whisky after you swim in the pond, just in case you swallowed any pond water). The stress of the drive is melting away already. Today is the 4th and we'll spend this evening visiting friends who have a summer home on Lake Cayuga, probably paddle around with the kids in kayaks and have some very good food and crisp white Finger Lakes Region wine.
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