It's amazing how fast time flies. One day, your youngest starts scool, the next, he or she is graduating high scool, if not college, leaving you to wonder, Where did the time go?
My mother's birthday was earlier this month. If she was still alive, she would have turned 95 this year. It doesn't seem that long since she turned 40, a few days after we arrived in Florida, a life-time ago.
Mom
We left Pittsford, New York, just outside Rochester, the last week in February 1971. Mom's map-reading skills were never that great; fortunately, mine are. We caravaned the first day with my uncle, who wanted to make sure we got a good start. Somehow, we ended up in Springfield, Massachusetts the first night, a side-trip of about 250 miles out of the way.
In the morning, Mom was sick with what turned out to be a life-long illness, though we didn't realize it at the time. We simply thought she was not doing well with the stress; she was moving half-way across the country with three kids, getting ready for a divorce, and about to hit 40, which, at the time, was a much bigger deal than it is now.
I was handed the keys to our Ford Station Wagon, reminded that I had my New York State learner's permit(!) and the ability to read a map, and told, "Get us to Grandma and Grandpa's place." Grandma and Grandpa lived in Kenneth City, a small city next to St. Petersburg on Florida's west coast. No problem!
Our uncle headed back to his place in New York, leaving us to head south caravan-free. Each morning of the trip, I would look over the map, figuring where we'd need to switch from I-95 to other roads so we could skirt different cities, seeing about where and when we could pull over for a break. It was during one of those breaks when I taught my sister how to read a map, over coffee (Mom and me), soda (my brother and sister) and whatever we felt like eating. She did fairly well, taking us only a couple of miles out of the way during a break in Pennsylvania. It turned out great, though: two or three miles off I-95, we went to turn arouond at a small diner and gift shop.
"Let's stop here to eat," Mom suggested. Good call, as my sister and I were able to pool our money for Mom's birthday gift. It was a speckled enamel tea pot, a one-of-a-kind gift that we thought was very cool. (No, we didn't give it to Mom right away; we waited until her birthday in Florida.)
A day or so later, we even spent the night in D.C., where a friend of mine, a surrogate older-brother, was going to school. He took us to dinner, then, after dropping Mom, my brother, and sister at the hotel, took me out to hang out for an hour or so.
After almost a week, we finally pulled into Grandma and Grandpa's Kenneth City appartment a day or so before Mom's birthday.
Grandma and Grandpa
The next day, Mom spent her 40th birthday in a nearby hospital emergency room. The doctors there were unable to discover what was wrong, and, after several hours, released her, telling her to rest, but come back if things didn't improve. Fortunately, things improved within a week or so, and we got on with the business of finding a house, getting us kids enrolled in school, and finding Mom a job.
Over the years, life ebbed and flowed with the usual ups and downs. I had already decided that I was goiong to leave Florida as soon as I was able to, while Mom and my sister and brother decided that they'd stay indefinitely. The irony is that after marrying my first step-dad, Bill, there was a move to Murray, Kentucky, where Bill was from. Later, my sister and her second husband moved to Colorado before landing on the West Coast. (My brother died 19 years ago, so there was no move for him.) I'm the one who remained in Florida...55 years after arriving.
Where does the time go?
