jet lag

I'm not saying that I've been lousy company lately, but when I got off the plane last Thursday my bag decided not to get off with me. It was a spur of the moment thing, I think, but while I disembarked in Houston, which was 89 degrees and muggy, my suitcase chose to fly on to Newark, which is 89 degrees and in New Jersey. Frankly, I was embarrassed for both of us.

It took a couple of days for Continental Airlines to track down and retrieve my errant bag, and by the end of Day 2 my travel outfit, which had started out feeling so chic and practical ~ sleeveless black tee, tan cargo pants with ruched cuffs; comfortable platform shoes, denim jacket ~ was swiftly morphing into something shabby and decidedly impractical.

We were on the move from the moment I arrived at the airport, and at some point the black leather upper on my right shoe became dislocated from it's man-made lower. The loss of the the 4 inch cork platform had me gimping along like someone who'd just lost a foot. The laces from the ruched trouser leg now dragging untidily on the floor, I looked like the victim of a fashionable farm accident.

On this day we were in search of a new recliner for my mom, my sister-in-law and I, and as I guided my mother's wheelchair into the expansive furniture showroom I could not help but note in the hundreds of beveled mirrors scattered throughout that a mysterious spot had opened between my brows and begun bleeding, and that my eyes had taken on a haunted, desperate quality. A saleswoman approached.

"Can I help you?" she asked. Dubiously, I thought. I chuckled.

"Yes," my elegant sis-in-law insisted firmly. "I'm sure you can." The saleswoman, Kerry, directed us to the recliners in the back of the store.

"Mom has to try them out to see if she can manipulate them herself," I told her. My mother is very old and quite frail, so much so that even the act of reclining is fraught with difficulty.

"No problem," said Kerry.

And so it was we spent the next hour taking turns picking Mom up and putting her down in dozens of fatly upholstered arm chairs, most of which she occupied like a doll tossed casually onto an oversized sofa. I tried out a few myself, and noticed Kerry eyeing my bottomless shoe, still sporting the scotch tape I'd originally tried fixing it with.

"My shoe broke. The airline lost my luggage," I explained. "And my face seems to be bleeding. I don't know why."

"Where y'all from?" she asked.

"California," I replied.

"I understand," she said. Kindly, I thought.

And you know, she probably did.