A Call at 3 A.M

My mother, as I have said earlier, is here visiting. We spent Saturday, the last day of her visit, in Old Town Alexandria, touring the sites (some I'd never been to, like the Carlye House and Gatsby's Tavern (where we were given a tour by cute-in-a-geeky-sort of way Josh) and eating too much at the Chart House. The LTR made baked pterodactyl (a.k.a. a large oven-roaster chicken) for a good send off feast. We ended the evening by watching the Bourne Identity (and all I could think of while watching it is "I'm f***ing Matt Damon").

Much later, it was 3 a.m. My mom was safe and soundly asleep in the guest bed while the LTR and I slumbered peacefully above.

The phone rang.

I sat bolt upright in bed.

It kept ringing.

"Hillary?" I cried. But she was no where in sight. Damn. I'll have to answer the phone myself.

It was my father. Mom's flight was canceled (the airline called my mom's cell phone, which, by logic only understood by my parents, was with my dad).

3 a.m. A phone call and a problem. And we were Hillary-less. We had to take matters into our own hands.

Luckily, I have experience in dealing with middle-of-the-night crisis. When I was little, I often spent the night at my grandparents and my grandpa was county engineer, which meant he was in charge of the roads. In the winter, this often meant getting phone calls at 3 a.m. as road conditions deteriorated and he would have to send the road crews out and coordinate their activities. Many times I would lay there and listen as he spent the night on the phone, in his pajamas with my grandmother wringing her hands at his side as he made the county safe.

With all that experience of nighttime phone call handling tucked under my belt, I knew I had crossed the crisis management threshold and had been ready since day one of my mom's visit, I took the phone in hand. I expertly called the airline and waited on hold for an agent. I'm vetted, I told myself as I waited, phone in hand and glasses perched on the edge of my nose, giving me an aura of Clintonesque competence to my mother.

Once the agent got on the phone I fought for my mother to get her on another flight. I took on the vast flight wing conspiracy to keep my mom in DC for another day. We need solutions, not excuses I told the agent. After all "Your flight is canceled" are just words. Thanks to my experience, the agent came through and we booked my mom on another flight. I have the scars to prove it.

Yes, thanks to my experience in handling middle of the night crisis from those years I spent at my grandparent's house, my mom is on her way to rejoin my dad.

I think I should be county engineer. Hell, make that a pilot.