I had to make the call – an audible – from high atop the Goethals Bridge. It was a change in plan.
My husband and I and our two young boys were trying to get to a family event in New Jersey but at the moment, we were stuck. We were 30 minutes late already, for a dinner that would take at least another hour to get to even if every vehicle in front of us were to suddenly evaporate.
Just then, my cell phone rang.
“Judy? Where are you? Everyone is hungry, and they want to start dinner. Is anything wrong?”
“No, Mom, we’re fine – we’re just stuck in New Jersey. At least I think it’s New Jersey.” I tried to squint out the car window, at the water below, but I’m not a fan of heights so I didn’t try very hard.
Living on Long Island is always a challenge, but never more so than when you have to get off it, to visit people living anywhere else. The problem is that, essentially, you live in a test tube, with a “stopper” made up of 5 boroughs-worth of bad traffic. Any place you need to go, you must allow for the raw travel time – calculated at night on an empty road – plus the X factor for traffic. X is all that matters; it’ll make or break you – usually the latter. But it’s no use explaining that to outsiders.
“We can’t move forward or backward, and there isn’t any way to turn around, and….”
“Next time just leave earlier, okay? We can’t wait any longer.”
No use, either, explaining that this time we HAD left earlier, but it had somehow only made things even worse. By leaving earlier, we seemed to encounter everyone in the entire metropolitan area who had had the same bright idea – and they were all stuck on the same bridge, in front of us.
Traveling with young children is a special torture. You haven’t been seasoned in the fires of parenthood until you try driving somewhere with a toddler who has just been toilet-trained. I remember one endless trip, racing up the state of Florida, wondering what sadist had put their rest stops 60 miles apart, and then decreed a 50 mph speed limit, when toddler bladders time out at 45 minutes, at best. And it’s hard to suggest “just pulling over to the side of the road” when you’ve explained to your little boy, mere hours earlier that day, that alligators might live in the ditches so don’t go near them!
Even without kids in the car, the mission of getting off the Island can sometimes feel like a surrealist movie. One night my husband and I were trying to get to a party in Manhattan. I was wondering what I could talk about, with people I hadn’t seen in several years, when I realized it might not matter, because the car hadn’t moved in quite some time. We turned on the traffic report just in time to notice that every highway and interchange was being closed, one after the other, between us and Manhattan. I started looking out my window for the helicopter gunship that was surely bearing down on us.
Eventually, the mysterious problem let up and we actually got to the party before it was over. (That’s the night I discovered that if you are willing to listen to other people complaining, you never need open your mouth.)
But family gatherings are not such easy sailing. The last time we had traveled to this branch of my family, it had not gone well. We were only five minutes late! But this was a holiday dinner with grandmas present, and “on time” for them means half an hour early. By the time we arrived – half-way through the salad course – they had worked themselves up into such a state that they were about to start calling emergency rooms. We never got a chance to talk about anything but “Why were you so late?” the entire night.
There didn’t seem much point in repeating that experience. The decision was clear. I made the call.
“Mom? I’m sorry, but we just aren’t going to make it. No, everybody’s fine, it’s just the X factor – I mean, there’s too much traffic. I’ll tell the boys you’re saving them some cake. We’ll see you soon. Probably.” As soon as we got off the bridge, we turned around and high-tailed it home. Wouldn’t you know – it only took 45 minutes.
