A Night Ride

Last night, mother was feeling gloomy, so I took her for a ride. We first drove to the nearby airport which has a wonderful gently curving entry road that has the look of an approach to an 18th century manor house. At night, the street lights shed puddles of light along the asphalt.

The airport has added a parking garage at the front that totally obscures any view of the terminal. And it appears they are constructing an addition to that garage. The garage may not be accessible during the construction, because the parking lot was jammed, with cars even sitting on the median between the lot and the street.

Airports at night have always held a certain fascination for me. Blue runway lights extending into the distance. The roar of the jets. The dark windows reflecting passengers and well-wishers. (Many years ago, I was at Dulles at midnight. It was so deserted that it bordered on the scary.)

We continued on from the airport in an easterly direction into an area that was not-so-long-ago sparsely populated. Now it is another stretch of commercial suburbia. Fast food, video rental, 24-hour supermarkets, car lots, petrol stations.

I turned onto the Interstate and headed back to the west intending to circle back to home. For several miles the road is dark and tree-lined, but this gives way to a stretch of commercial sites. Then you enter an under-construction area in which the cars in the other lanes seem only a few inches away.

Just as I turned to the north, traffic ahead was gridlocked. It was impossible to tell what the problem was. I was fearful we would become mired in the vehicular grid. We slowly moved forward until I could see what looked like a massive accident ahead. Indeterminate shapes, very bright flood lights and rotating blue orbs. For a second I thought of the landing site in "Close Encounters." As I got nearer, I discovered it had something to do with the laying of concrete. The flood lights were on trucks on either side that effectively left only a single lane for traffic.

We drove by the state fair which is in town for several weeks. The ferris wheel blazed with its colored lights. A dark crane hovered over the midway. And I caught the smell of cooking meat.

As we moved up one of the oldest streets, I pointed out buildings and places that mother might be familiar with. We finally reached the highway that would take us home. Another commercial path distinguished by low-rise office complexes.

Nearing home, I wondered if I had inadvertently confused mother. I'm certain at several points she was not sure where we were.

Once I parked the car, I felt a sense of relief and realized I was stressed out instead of relaxed. So in the future, I'll be far more hesitant about taking mother for night trips.

PAX!