I got a phone call a few weeks ago from an old time family friend. “Jillian, I’m worried about your motha”, she said with her thick Bostonian accent. “She needs you and it has to be you. You are the one who can help her move out of her place and give her good advice about what to do with her life.” I booked myself on a flight that evening.

So today I am on my way to Hartford, Connecticut, for five days, to help me beloved mum move out of her happy little nest. I left the boys skateboarding up and down their grand parents concrete driveway in Denver, much more fun than the gravel driveway that we have at home. As I drove away to the airport I looked back at the mass of equipment that I had left for them which was now cluttering my in-laws foyer. “Have fun”, I yelled out the window.

It is a completely different experience traveling without the boys. I sat in the sixth row on both flights, a luxury saved for the people who don’t have children. How nice to not have to inhale the bathroom fumes. Maybe I should tell the airlines that once children are four and older they can actually be pleasant to sit near. No doubt, they are a whole lot more enjoyable than sitting next to an enormous, smelly adult whose sweaty arm keeps rubbing against you.

Moving up in the plane does not, however, change your status. The snotty, lazy stewardesses still treat you like a low life economy passenger. I have grown to really despise them as they role their eyes at you for making any request. I especially love it when I order my special drink that I, for some odd reason, only order on airplanes. “I’ll have a cranberry juice with seltzer water and no ice”, I order. With complete annoyance they hand me a plastic cup with ice and two cans, one of seltzer and one of cranberry juice. I wait until they get it right which inevitably starts a war. Ok, maybe I’m partially at fault.

When we arrived into Philadelphia I asked the stewardess if she could please hold up the passengers departing the plane, so that I could get my bag in the overhead department and make my flight, which was in a different, far away, terminal and departing in fifteen minutes. She told me to just muscle my way back to the bag amidst the upstream traffic. “I’m confused”, I said. “I thought your job was to help people”. She responded by telling me that she was helping me by telling me what to do. I did as she recommended by putting out my horns and charging my way back to my bag, bumping into anybody who didn’t get out of my way. I was no way in hell going to hang out any longer than I needed to in the Philadelphia airport. Puffing heavily through my nose, as usual, I got my bag and exited quickly giving the matador the dirty eye. Ole!

As I ran to my next flight, I decided that I would try to avoid ever flying through Philadelphia again. It was a depressing, dirty, crowded airport. I caught my plane and proceeded to sit on the runway for another two hours while waiting for the other planes before us to take off. The stewardess informed us that this was a common occurrence in Phillie, thus reaffirming my desire to stay away in the future.

We descended into another dark turbulent sky and as the landing gear clunked down, the older German woman sitting next to me said, “I sink zer are maintenance issues vis dis plane.”

Driving back on highway 91 brought back a flood of memories from my childhood. It  saddened me that my home that I grew up in was gone and now my mother’s new home as well. I would never enjoy those warm summer June evenings again as I did when I was a child. The lush and abundant trees alongside the highway had not been cut down for development and it was all so green. We watched as the last colors of the day set behind the hills and listened to the frogs croaking away, or at least I knew they were frogs, my mother thought that they were late night geese croaking, she and Wade constantly surprise me when it comes to naming the creatures in nature.

Tomorrow I will put on my Superhero cape, inhale a lot of Advil and get to work. I hope that I do not plunge into a depression while, once again, packing up my mother’s belongings. I can only hope that her new home will be as beautiful and peaceful as it is here. There is still so much to do before she closes on Friday and I am glad that I am here for her. I must remain strong, after all, that is what daughters are for. To  show our love in any way that we can and help our parents when they need us.

We are flying once again to visit Grandma Nicky in Florida. I don’t know how we are going to pay for it but I know that I am needing to get away. Wade is all for it. He loves those ten days he blessedly gets of peace and quiet. To his credit, he is usually refreshed and ready for us by the time that we return.

The boys are dying with excitement. We have missed two years of visiting Florida and the boys are craving their lawless grandmother who serves them ice cream for breakfast and breeds chaos.

Brevitt is excited to reconnect with all of Grandma’s friends and chat with them by the pool in between splashing them with canonballs. Axel can’t wait to search for shells and throw things off of the balcony and Tucker, who secretly eats dirt, is excited to finally blast off in an airplane and secretly eat sand.

The boys and I saw an ad for Singapore Airlines in a magazine. They asked if that was the airplane we were going on. I almost spit up my tea. Would that airlines had advanced so much that we each had our individual huge seats with costumed stewardesses and gourmet meals.

While walking through first class the boys often loudly questioned why we are so poor that we have to sit in the back by the bathrooms and pay $6.00 for spam and crackers. I find it useful to take these times to stress good working values so that they too can sit in First Class.

I called my mother, Nicky, to tell her that I had just booked the tickets and she gushed with excitement, “ooooh, she said in her refined English accent, “I’m so glad your finally coming. We will have such fun”. That’s what I love about my mommy, she is very much in denial when it comes to the realities of life.

Last time we visited, pre Madoff scandal, Michele and I with our combined six children and our mother, treated ourselves to a nice hotel room on the beach for a few days. Growing up visiting the finest hotels in the world we felt compelled to give our children a taste of the good life.

Since there were no waves to play in, the men did not come on this trip. Without them life was a lot less stressful. The kids loved running around completely undisciplined as we three elders laughed and lounged without a care in the world. Brevitt and Devon would go down to the restaurant in the mornings and drink their coffee together while eating chocolate croissants. We were overdue for a vacation and couldn’t care less about meals or schedules. We did whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted and so did the kids.

This behavior cannot last long without the inevitable trouble happening. Unbeknownst to Michele, Nicky and I, the unsupervised six kids disturbed the peace once again knocking on hotel room doors and than taking off down the hallways. We were sitting in the hotel room when suddenly Brevitt came crashing into the room and hid under the bed. The story started to reveal itself as each child sheepishly came back to look for him. Apparently a very irate hotel guest had shouted at Brevitt and told him that she was going to call the police for noise disturbance. We left him for a good half hour under the bed shaking at the prospect of going to jail. I love those life lessons!

I am filled with fear from all of the airplane crashes that have been occurring but refuse to give up travel. After all, I made it through the stages of walking up and down the aisles with my social babies and no longer have to change stinky diapers in the disgusting, tiny excuse for bathrooms. What I do dread is the cramped seats, re-circulated germs, smelly people and snotty, unhelpful stewardesses who take pleasure in waking me and my sleeping children out of our blissful drooling sleep to see if we want coffee. Why sleep if you can stay a wake caffeinated.

I am ready to face the challenges of flying knowing that the end result will be ten days spent with Grandma and the kids in the warm sun wearing nothing but flip flops and bathing suits. This is far better than ten days spent struggling daily with ski equipment, terrain parks and hours searching for activities in our Vini-man.

I am sad for most people who marry into a life-long struggle with their in-laws. In-laws seem to take up a lot of airtime with many of my friends and I feel their pain. I am aware of how awful it would be to have to take Xanax to prepare for the impending in-law visit. Fortunately for me, my husbands’ parents, Frank and Barbara, are an exception to the norm. They are so helpful, accepting and loving I would not be surprised if they sprouted wings before my eyes. In fact, with a mother like Barbara, I am surprised that Wade married a girl like me. I lack all of the talents that his mother bestowed upon him when he was growing up.

Barbara would have fared well as a pioneer when the West was being settled. She has quartered a large elk without any assistance and cooked a snake for dinner that, in any other situation, would have been left for road kill.  She nurtures her plants all winter long in her greenhouse and lovingly transplants them into her luscious garden in the summer.  If she would show off her sewing skills she would win many accolades for the wedding dresses that she hand-sewed for my sister-in-law and niece.

Barbara is as close to a Saint that I will ever come. Taking care of all of those around her she never complains and is always there to listen. The family flocks to her home over the holidays ready to feast on the cornucopia of food prepared with love. The kitchen and house is immaculate, that is until we arrive with the boys.

She has become my mentor and my guide. I call her in a panic requesting her to assist me on all of my electronic purchases. She became my official researcher for all of our appliances in our house. As sweet as she is she will not accept mediocrity and in her tough and charming manner she always gets results from the vendors.

When Barbara has advice everybody listens. Being clairvoyant and intuitive she won’t offer her opinion up unless prodded. I was upset with Wade once when we were visiting the cabin together in Breckenridge. He had absent-mindedly gone on a bike ride without me and I was fuming. Barbara came up to me and demanded, “Don’t get mad, get goin’!” She says it like it is.

When Grandma Barbara and Grandpa Frank come to visit they are never idle. Barbara gets out the sewing machine and mends all of our tattered clothes. Frank chops wood, gets on his hands and knees to scrub the floors and draws plans for bookshelves and ladders that he will later slave over and make in his workshop at home. When he is not working he is on all fours impersonating a jungle gym as the three growing boys crawl all over him.

At dinnertime we sit around the dining table and laugh at Grandpa’s raucous jokes. The boys’ love that they are listening to highly inappropriate subject matter and Grandma smiles and shakes her head waiting for the impending punch line, she has heard it all before. They tell stories of Wade of which I am sworn to secrecy and they praise me for being a great mother to their three grandchildren.

Before they leave, I make them promise to set a date for their next visit. We wave goodbye and go back into the house, which feels empty and somehow colder without them in it. I wish I could do more for them than just cook them good meals but know that they don’t expect anything in return.

I hope that the tradition will continue with my daughter-in-laws and that Wade and I will be a big part of our grandchildren’s lives. I figure that I have about twenty more years to develop some skills and grow my wings. I will call Barbara to get her advice on how to proceed.

Note the green marker all over grandpa’s face

Grandma Barbara and Grandpa Frank camping with the boys