It was an unusually cold and rainy day, but since it was early May the busride was a kind of dreary pleasure, full of this spring's melancholia (Black Heart Procession, Benji Hughes, and even a bit of Yellow Swans). From steamy windows I saw daffodils and lilacs in front of the panalak and the endless parade of grandmothers getting and off the bus with thei little cloth-wheel carts, much more age appropriate somehow than the wire ones the ladies push in NYC. Everything else was wild green or grey, May explosion or same old sky.
My mom missed her connection in Germany and it ended up becoming some kind of modern existential nightmare for me, to and from and waiting and texts, cellphones, emails, calling friends and family in America, calling the airport, Skyping, and in the end just sitting on the stupid bus again until I got past the suburbs, the hypermarkets, the flight school, and to Terminal 2, Schengen Zone, to pick her up in the fake Starbucks, where she had made friends with all the English speaking folks in the off-time where she sat waiting for me. She refused to admit that it could have been in any way her fault - not calling, not having my address written down - and we got on the bus only to an awkward silence. "Are you really going to pout?" I asked. "Yes," she said. So I got up and went to the back of the bus and put my iPod back on.
Wow. The worst.
