Unnecessary Objects

We arrived in Long Beach, California, thankfully by way of Oakland, to find that my in-laws were not yet at the airport. Carolee has not worked, ‘outside of the home,’ since my husband was born, approximately 32 years after our arrival that day. And despite having all that time on her hands, cannot manage to get anything done, or be on time. It was a typical sunny, Southern California day and they knew our arrival was impending, planned for a few months, and here we were, standing on the curb of what was once a small, private airport, with 4 pieces of luggage, a stroller, an infant seat and a three-month-old. This time was not the time I would have picked to be late, or to be late because I had been at a Thrift Store picking up unnecessary objects.

They arrived in the 1992 Olds, riding low, not because they had purposefully created it, but because they took ‘just enough’ care of the car to justify keeping it. I knew their caravan of car selections, and I guess I was relieved that this was the newest of the lot, but I don’t think I was completely prepared for the fact that there would probably not be enough room. Further, that afternoon we were set to visit with one of my husband’s friends from High School and his family that lived nearby in Long Beach. They were our friends who didn’t have parents that shopped at the Thrift Store or parents who drove cars that should have been sold for scrap 75,000 miles earlier.

As always, we were happy to see them, but between the stress of travelling with an infant, the waiting curbside for a solid 30 minutes and the concern that we would not fit in the car, I was peeved, or possibly and more appropriately, pissed off. I have never really, in my relationship with my husband, ever held my tongue with his mother. Perhaps part of it is that I know she gives me the same respect; perhaps part of me is the fact I can't often see her as my mother, or that I actually do.

Once they pull up, my mother-in-law waddles from her constant seat as the navigator and instructor in the car, and my father-in-law springs from the driver’s side, immediately offering his outstretched, bony arms for a warm hug, followed by a long look at our luggage. My mother-in-law is wearing elastic waist K-mart polyester pants, in her staple color of either khaki or black, circa 1980s time frame when she went from caring what she wore to caring what it cost to wear it. For what she doesn’t care about in her personal hygiene or clothing selections, she makes up for with the amount of jewelry she is wearing. No less than 6 gold bangles on each arm, several gold chains, rings on at least two fingers on each hand, and a delicate, 24 carat gold watch which could only be read by 20/15 vision, and if she wasn’t clearly white, she could easily have earned her way as an extra in a Bollywood movie.

We were travelling from Virginia, out to San Francisco, and then to Los Angeles, with a three-month-old and expecting the normal, mid-March weather changes. For a first time mom, there was no ‘packing light.’ After popping their trunk on the Olds, revealing the less than spacious trunk, despite what one might think, we cannot fit all four pieces of our luggage, the baby gear and the people necessary in the car. Did I mention they live 70 miles from the airport?

Again, I thanked God we were coming off a one hour flight and not a 5 hour one. After watching my mother-in-law instruct and reprimand my father-in-law for his inability to properly pack the close-to-if-not-over-the-50-lb-limit luggage pieces, we were able to get most of them in the back, but the trunk would still not close. So my mother-in-law waddles into the airport for some string. Well she starts to, and then realizes that she has a perfectly capable husband who she can tell to do that for her. She spends no less than 5 minutes explaining what the string should look like, how long it should be and how much he will need. So in the time that it could have taken for her to go in and do it herself, she spends telling him how to do it.

I am only a little less embarrassed because they are not my blood relatives. I know that despite their inability to purchase cars made in the any decade close to the one they are in does not reflect on their financial status. I don’t think my mother-in-law owns or would purchase any clothing that was new. She thinks paying more than $5 for an article of clothing is ridiculous and often even thinks something more than $2 is not worthy of her money. But she will buy and wear a $3000 watch with her $2 outfit.

Once my father-in-law comes out of the airport, string in hand, we spend about another 20 minutes attempting to secure the trunk down, with the luggage showing through about a foot of space between the hood and the closure. The baby is thankfully not too concerned with the mess, but I am, given at his age, babies are ticking time bombs and want to feed when they want to feed (especially my boob-only and boob-now little man). So we pile into the car: my in-laws riding in the front, with the snap-n-go stroller between them and a baby bath tub (the thrift store purchase that morning for 75 cents) on my mother-in-law’s lap. Henry is secured in between my husband and I, who are both travelling with various pieces of baby gear on our laps in the back. We looked like the Clampets, heading on the 5 up to Beverly Hills. . .just in about 5 decades later.

I can hear the banjo play in my head as we roll the (now) low rider through Long Beach, capturing some of this on video, at least what I can see through the myriad of unnecessary objects atop me.