To properly hear this story, you need to know that I don’t talk a lot with my sibs. No slight on them, if anything it’s a slight on me. I’m just not one of life’s chatters. (Yeah yeah, but typing is different.) For all I know the rest of the family is thick as thieves (although that’s not really the impression I get) but I can go years not hearing the sound of their voices. So, when I answer my phone and it’s my sister Linda, I immediately perk up. And honestly I give her tre-MEN-dous props for calling me like this, exactly because it’s not in our natures. She lives much closer to our folks and sees them on a pretty regular basis, and she was calling to let me know that she was of the opinion that I ought to visit more frequently if I didn’t want to risk having a list of conversation topics and nobody to share them with. And that’s about as delicate as I can put that. Precisely because we don’t talk a whole lot it really resonated with me that I should heed her warning. Since it wasn’t a capital-C “Crisis” I didn’t automatically drop everything and jump on the first flight out, but in pretty short order arrangements had been made. And so, immediately upon celebrating my bride’s birthday in Lisbon, I made for the airport and flapped my way to the middle of South Carolina.

Sidebar: when an immigrant in our little community in Braga heads back to the States, it’s polite to ask around with your friends to see if there’s anything that they need. Heck, it’s not really considered rude (at least, with people I know well) to just up and ask for something to be brought back if you know somebody is making the trip. It’s not like Portugal is some deprived wasteland where basic necessities are rare commodities, but sometimes you just prefer something from the U.S. that doesn’t make it across the Atlantic for whatever reason. (Stories of foods from the States not being allowed in Europe because they’re full of evil chems that the E.U. could never countenance are wildly overblown. It happens but not nearly as much as people like to say.) For example, I have a preference for deodorant that isn’t available over here. I also prefer classic French’s mustard on my sandwiches compared to the typical mustard available here. So, when Lisa or I make it back, we snag a six-pack of sticks and a bottle of mustard to tide me over until the next time. Another example is ibuprofen. People get attached to the pain relievers that they know have worked for them, and ibuprofen can actually be hard to find here; plus, like most medication in Europe it tends to come in a 10 or 20 qty box in individual blisters; a cheap bottle of 500 units is essentially non-existent. Certainly there are effective medicines over here, but people just like what they like sometimes, ya know? Coming home from the States this time the highlights included a restock of some favorite t-shirts of mine, a couple of board games that friends had been holding on to for us, and some Chukar cherries for those special occasions when nothing else will do.

This trip to South Carolina was pretty quiet. Like I said before, this wasn’t a “crisis”, it was simply important in different ways. I stayed at my folk’s place (not my “childhood home” in the way non-military families mean it, but I spent grades 3-6 there, it was where I returned for holidays during college, and I also lived there for a little more than a year during… oh let’s call it my ‘wandering’ days after college *ahem* so it has its share of memories) and went over every day to spend time with them, talking and watching whatever was on the tube. The biggest news, honestly, was that my dad had after many years finally gotten comfortable with a hearing aid solution, meaning the tv (or music) wouldn’t be running constantly at near-max volume, and he could participate normally in most conversations. That was a tremendous positive change that actually got me quite emotional because he’d been tuning out more and more because of his hearing challenges. I did make one detour, also a common occurence when an immigrant goes back: diverting to see a friend that lives within a few hours. After all, we don’t get back that often. So, I scooted up to North Carolina for a day to see my good friend Liz for a night of relaxed chill and board games.

Almost coincidentally the trip lined up with my mom’s 88th birthday, so the sibs all converged for a little get-together at a local restaurant everybody can agree on. Getting all five Caskers (give or take a married name) at a table is a vanishingly-rare occurrence but (in my opinion at least) everybody has aged out of whatever sibling roles we might have had so it’s “just people”, which is actually pretty nice. And as for my list of conversation topics? Pretty much covered. I mean, no transition in life is ever completely clean, but I feel pretty good about the fact that nobody involved should ever feel “I just never got the chance to say…” whatever those things may be. So, again, thanks Linda. I was there for about a week and was definitely ready to be home by the end; not sick of my parents and family, just missing Lisa and my life as it is now.

The overall purpose of this trip, or at least the inciting obligation (ooo fancy) is to check in with our scattered family units every couple of years. Despite the modern advances in communication and travel there has still been a visceral, emotional reaction to us moving across the Atlantic Ocean. The sensation is that we’ll be so far away, out of sight and out of communication range… as if we’re Irish immigrants on our way to pass through Ellis Island and into the New World. The truth is that the net increase in travel time between us and our family has only been a few hours, and the dawn of the Zoom Era has meant that people have never been more able to connect with one another over any distance, but the truth isn’t always the right answer. Sometimes the right answer is that you get your butts back to the United States and spend some quality time. And so, having indulged ourselves with an extended detour through Halifax and DC, we headed south while taking the time to indulge in one of the great American past times – the road trip.

We scooted back to the airport and picked up our rental car – we usually roll with compacts but this was a longer drive, hauling actual luggage, so we got a “standard” size. Don’t laugh, this qualifies as upgraded amenities for us! If we were going to drive straight to our final destination – Sumter, South Carolina – it would only take us 8 or so hours straight down I-95 with just a little dog leg at the end. We aren’t going straight, though. When John was but a wee bairn his father was in the military, and during John’s life his stations were mostly in the Southeast US. BuuUUUuuut all of the relatives were back in Tom and Wanda’s original stomping grounds in the hills surrounding Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So, the Caskers made frequent drives up and down the coast for family visits. Often, they drove through the Blue Ridge mountains. Fast forward to this trip, and with no schedule but our own to keep we decided to head south through those mountains. It took a lot longer, but it really was beautiful. Face it, there’s no reason to go through West Virginia unless you have business there, so it’s easy to forget just how dang pretty it is there. We took most of a day just making a wide, swooping curve, west and south, just taking in the wooded mountains. (Alas, a little early for leaf peeping.) At one point John exclaimed “Hey! We’re in Breezewood!” This left Lisa nonplussed, and he realized that this was a landmark from those childhood drives. Breezewood is an on-ramp/off-ramp for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and the Caskers often stopped there, either for the night if it was late or else for a burger lunch before making the final stretch of the drive to their ancestral home. Other than memories, though, there’s not much to recommend it (sorry, Breezewoodians, it’s lovely, really) and we pressed on.

Because of the extra miles we tacked on to the trip it would’ve been hellacious for a one-day journey, so we hit a waypoint in North Carolina with our friends Liz and Brett. Funnily enough, while most of our visits with friends were the first we’d seen each other in years, Liz we had seen less than a week earlier! She’s part of the same social circle as the people we met up with in Halifax, and that had turned into too tempting a gathering for her to miss and she made the trip up – Brett has family in Boston, so they made a whole thing out of it. Still, a second crack at hanging out with friends is never a bad thing, and we passed a lovely evening in their home. (Bonus – not the antiseptic hotel environment!) Refreshed, we legged it the last four hours or so to Sumter.

John’s folks recently transitioned into an assisted living facility after more than 30 years in their house there. For better or worse it was not a sudden thing and some amount of advanced planning was possible, which seems to have led to a fairly smooth transition for them. No matter how smooth, though, suddenly not keeping up with a two-story house with a big yard a pool… heck, suddenly not even cooking for yourself!… takes some getting used to. His folks seem to be doing really well, though. In fact, having three square meals a day provided like clockwork has actually put some meat back on his dad’s bones. We were there for a little more than four days. The centerpiece was an early celebration of the Caskers’s 65th wedding anniversary! His brother and sister came in for the weekend (they both live much closer than we ever did, even when we were in Seattle) and we all got gussied up for a nice meal in a local restaurant. The restaurant, by the way, fed into John’s Grand Unified Theory of Picking a Restaurant – it was the first family-owned joint we’d eaten at in the United States this trip, and was easily the best meal we had. It wasn’t all that fancy (mostly slightly jujed-up southern comfort food) but the food was good and the service was friendly without being cloying. Other than that meal, the whole visit was decidedly low-key; a few meals in the assisted living facility, a couple of meals out (John got to check “American Mexican food” off of his checklist of “food he misses”), and we had a nice time catching up with the extended Casker clan.

To every time there is a season, however, and we needed to hit the road. We actually called an audible at this point. The plan had been to stay a last night in Sumter, then get up early to make the drive to Atlanta, thence to drop off the car and jet to Seattle. The more we chewed on the math, though, the earlier we set our planned departure time and at a certain point it felt like too much of a grind in one day. So instead, we had dinner with the folks and then hit the road the night before. We killed the last night of our Sumter reservation and booked a night near Hartsfield-Jackson (the big Atlanta airport). John dropped the car off in the evening, and we were able to have a leisurely morning, catch breakfast, and meander to the airport via the hotel shuttle. All in all, part 1 of our North American tour, from Halifax to Sumter, was a series of pleasant successes. We weren’t feeling any drag from traveling yet, and so we happily pointed our noses northwest to return to the only other place we had ever, as a family, called home.

It was an “I got a phone call at 4 AM” caliber scare, and as I have said to people about this, my sister knows how to do math; she knew exactly what time it was when she called me from back in the States. You also know how serious it was from how quickly I committed to going to South Carolina. If you’ve had a chance to get to know us Ramblers (a thing I’ve never called us before and, having now “heard” it, will never do again) you know that we talk. A lot. Lisa’s father (hi, Terry!) once remarked on how much we communicate, with an undertone of “I’m proud of what good communicators you are”. Lisa and I laughed in unison and explained that in fact we are terrible at communicating with one another but have learned to compensate for this by going over things. A lot. In detail. We’re so used to it that we forget that other people don’t necessarily do it that way. ANYWAY (holy shit, you talk a lot, John? Shocking…), I did not discuss it with my now kind-of awake bride before saying “yeah, ok, I’m coming as soon as I can.” And she, when she heard the details, completely agreed.

To keep this from being an episode of “Marcus Welby, MD” (kids, ask your grandparents) let me just get you the diagnosis up front. She has congestive heart failure, which is not a sudden thing but it apparently tipped over into the red that week or so. She had actually gone into the hospital once, stayed for a few days, and then was released with what was, in hindsight at least, unseemly haste. She went home with oxygen tanks, a machine for refilling said tanks, and oh yes a similarly aged husband who was likely to trip over all of these new tubes and cables on his way to the bathroom, unplugging some or all of it. It took about three days for her to be back in bad shape, and so into the Intensive Care Unit she went. That’s when I got the call. It was a bit of a blur after that, but I’m pretty sure there was pneumonia in there at some point. At the worst of it, she was getting oxygen “from the wall”, which is to say the industrial feed rather than just one of those canisters you see people with, and it was on full blow.

Also not trying to write a mystery/suspense novel so here’s how the story ends; no need for you to have any anxiety waiting to hear how it turns out. Mom is apparently on the extreme end of the “positive outcomes” side of the results bell curve. She is basically… well, fine. I mean, she’ll probably be on oxygen for the rest of her life, but now it’s just a steady trickle out of one of those canisters that you roll around with. No, you’d rather not need that sort of thing, but given the other options we’ll take it. She walks, she talks, she’s just as coherent as ever (and she’s always been a pretty sharp cookie), she beats me at cribbage. Dangit. So, no, this is not a story that ends in drama.

One new thing that happened on this trip is that I bought a one-way ticket to South Carolina. I’ve never gone on a trip and not known when I was coming home, but the simple truth is there was no fixed agenda for the coming days. Total travel time was about 20 hours, and then my brother and his girlfriend(? do we have girlfriends when we’re almost 60?) picked me up at CAE aka, Columbia International Airport. In the end, I was in South Carolina for around 4 weeks; plus or minus. Also of note, this is the longest stretch of time that Lisa and I have been apart from one another since we first hitched our horses back in 2003-ish. We’ve both had therapy and we’re pretty sure we aren’t “actually” codependent, but we sure do like spending time together.

So why didn’t Lisa come? Funny story! We committed ourselves awhile back to house sitting for friends of ours while they were out of the country. They have a lovely home in Arcozelo Villa Verde (usually just referred to as Villa Verde although there’s a teeny distinction involved), a nice piece of property with a little grass, trees, the whole shebang. They’ve also got a dog and a cat, which is the reason they wanted housesitters rather than just someone to look in on the place. Lisa and I have designs on doing a lot of these kinds of gigs in the future (more on that another time) so we were happy to start off with something close to home. The pets were a lot of fun; Jack is a black dog with some white markings, maybe 10-15 pounds lighter than Sasha was but the same general size and shape, so it was easy to fit him into life. Kitty is a sweet indoor-outdoor cat who has no use for boys as far as we could tell; that was Lisa’s cat, full stop! We were scheduled to be there for almost three weeks; I got the call about four days into our stay. The people we were ‘sitting for weren’t even on the same continent at the time, and in case they had made significant commitments based on us having their home covered; one of us, at least, had to stay. Lisa, who let’s remind everyone is one of life’s great people and my dearest love, never once made a noise about how very different the house stay would be without me there, but it was. First of all, we still don’t have a car, and being out by yourself in the countryside, no matter how peaceful and crime-free the country is, can still be nervous-making if you aren’t used to it. Jack was a huge comfort there. Also, while this isn’t a hard and fast rule, the usual split of responsibilities for something like this would have me in charge of making sure that Jack got plenty of exercise; now she had to handle that as well. She took all of this in stride, but it did mean that she wasn’t coming with me. By the time our obligations were fulfilled with the housesitting gig my mom was clearly on the mend and it didn’t really make sense to expend the resources to get her out to the States as well; especially since, in just a few months, we’ll be coming back for a planned trip.

So, this isn’t meant to be a complete blow-by-blow. My mom is basically fine, Lisa ended up handling the housesit quite well without me, and before too long I was able to come back home.

I figure what’s worth talking about from a Rambly perspective is what the US looks like when you haven’t been there for awhile. Short version: reeeeeaaaally big. I kind of forgot how (almost) every home and business in America accounts for parking sufficient cars. There’s parking for cars everywhere! Where I live now, yes there are a few shopping centers with big parking areas, but it’s just not anywhere near the same thing. Put it this way, if I’m driving in many parts of Portugal and I miss my turn, the idea of “turning around in the next parking lot” is a fool’s errand. You hear a lot about how cheap wine is in Portugal. That means I had the opposite reaction when I was rolling through a grocery store, not even looking for wine, but went past that section and was shocked at the prices of the bottles. Yes, there are a couple of cheap bottle here and there, but more than half of the selection was $10+. I’d say the average bottle at the store here is… 4 euros? Plus or minus? Things are expensive in ways that I didn’t remember at all. On my first full night there, after visiting mom at the hospital I just wanted a little comfort food… or stress eating, call it what you will. Anyway, I order a small pepperoni pizza from Domino’s, adding in some kind of small bread nibble-y things ’cause… comfort food, right? Shut up. Anyway those two items, plus a delivery charge, and then a tip to the driver (because I presume a shit wage and no healthcare, perhaps unfairly but probably not), it came to 41 USD. Readers in America are looking at that right now and thinking “er, yeah? Sounds like they were having a special.” I promise you, readers in Portugal are doing cartoon a-OO-ga eyes right now.

Long story short (shut up), while I certainly didn’t feel like a total stranger or anything so severe, the visit really stressed just how much I have acclimated to life in Portugal. It all came together when I realized that I was referring to South Carolina as the place where my mom and dad live, rather than “home”. And when I finally made it back to my bride and my apartment, I absolutely felt like I had come home.