assignment #10 - lily gardner: two thousand twenty minutes, thirty-seven hours

My father told me that “if North Korea ever declares nuclear war, Eastern Kentucky is the place to be.” He’s right. To get within a ten mile radius of our house the missile would have to take a boat, a couple of flights, and rent a car for an hour and a half journey from the nearest airport, two and a half if thinking of international availability.

When my mother and I moved out of the boondocks we expected for her family to begin to visit us. This was not unreasonable, I can only recall her sister’s family, our emotionally closest relatives, arriving in Salyersville, KY once during my childhood. It was when I stared in Annie, and I think they only came because my mother promised it to be a performance worthy of a Tony.

Meanwhile, I was up there many times - to see my cousins in various productions of their own, none, of course, to the same caliber as mine, or even simply to visit. To be clear, they also live in the boondocks, an hour outside of Boston. The trek was not so different, especially if we were going all the way out to the Blueberry House, almost three hours away.

Since we moved, none of them have come to visit. We failed to furnish the guest room until my grandmother announced last year, on a whim, that she would come visit for four days on her way to Florida. I had a case of whooping cough, at that time undiagnosed. We went to the doctor and Whole Foods, she is now an herbalist and we’re all boycotting Jeff Bezos. I don’t ever expect her to return to these parts.

I have a devout skeptic of God. There are times when I am convinced of his existence - when rude couples decide to forego acquiring children, when my phone dies in the middle of an arduous conversation, when I do not fail a Spanish quiz. To be clear, these times are few and far between, but my joy is often so engulfing that it changes my entire perspective. I suppose this is what Christians call “the Enlightenment,” I call it the God induced orgasm.

I thought perhaps that after driving thirty-seven hours in a week to fulfill the Thanksgiving plans of the family that refused to visit us would be one of those times. But of course, karma is a bitch who can’t seem to listen to the multitude of good deeds I’ve listed in the letters I’ve sent to her. When we got stuck behind a 30+ car crash, I asked myself what penance I needed to do to leave this purgatory. But then I realized, Jesus wasn’t my problem, my stationary family was.

And so, waiting in the interminable lines of traffic in Frostburg, Maryland, my mother and I cheers-ed our kombucha bottles and drank to a “2020 in which people get off their damn asses and come to us.”

We had forgotten that visiting relatives is akin to a short stint in hell.