a few good airline agents

So some family and friends chipped in to fly my daughter and I east for the holidays. Like so many west-east travelers this christmas season it was a harrowing near-miss event. Ticketed for 7am the day after christmas we arrived at the terminal curb to see dozens of people leaving the terminal, cell phones glued to heads. After I hauled our luggage onto the curb, a cellphone-to-ear man asks if I'm heading east, then says, "yeah me too, all the east coast flights have been cancelled. there's a storm." Undaunted, I left mother, daughter, and bags on curb and rushed inside. A very kind man gave me a slip of paper with the 1-800 number to call for rebooking. Loads of people were in a rebooking line, but the agent advised me to go home if i lived here cause no one was going anywhere today. Back at home with my weeping daughter who is sure WE WILL NEVER EVER GET TO GO MOMMY, I start calling the 800 number, after 90 minutes of busy signals, I stumbled upon a glitch in the system (my secret sorry), that puts me directly in contact with  a real live human being who immediately books me for the same flight tomorrow. Done. So, at 5am the next day we get up and hustle to the airport, bags never left car trunk. Upon arrival, the curb agent tells me it is too late to check in, I rush inside, leaving mother, daughter, and bags again. I see the same agent (Carlito) from the day before. Of course I'll check you in he says and ushers me over to kiosk check in. Big red letters blink out at us CHECK IN CLOSED, NO TICKETING AVAILABLE. I'm sorry he says, you needed to check in 45 minutes before departure. But I was waiting in line outside in time, and he couldn't do it, etc, etc I say. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do for you he says. Just then my daughter comes running in, bags and coats flying, "can we go mommy, can we go?" I looked Carlito in the eyes and pleaded, "please, please, I know there must be something you can do, you  saw us here yesterday, this is our only chance to see our family out east, we'll do anything, sit anywhere, oh please help us." And Carlito did something. He brought us to a different ticketing agent and told her to put us on our flight. She says we can go but no time to check in our luggage. We'll go without it I say! I throw the phone at my daughter instructing her to call grandma NOW and tell her to come back for the luggage. I drop to the floor and unzip the monster bag, looking for necessities to stuff in the carry on, socks and underwear are flying everywhere as I frantically stuff things in, deodorant, pjs, underwear, hers, mine, ok, one sweater each...now the lady agent is standing over me saying, now, you have to go now if you're going to make this flight. She's grabbing random clothing items and stuffing them back in my bag, She's zipping my bag up and putting me together. I'm ready. I'm ready. My mom will be here for the bag. You can't leave your bag unattended she says, but you need to be escorted to the plane now. But what to do? And then this wonderful agent says she will stay with my bag and wait for my mother and she instructs another agent to get us to the plane.....and you know what? we got on our plane. And we were the only flight that made it out to our destination in day 2 of that east coast blizzard. The man sitting next to us said he was surprised we were able to rebook for the next day, a friend of his whose flight had been canceled yesterday as well has spent 9 hours on hold and got rebooked for 3 days later....

$800

As one of the many overeducated and underemployed, I was overjoyed to make $800 last week (nothing illegal!). In fact it was the first time I have earned money (thank you a million times over to the friends and family who have kept my daughter and I afloat through these many hard months) since June 30th. Damn it felt good.

So, today's dilemma after deposting that check:
a. pay my sister the $750 in rent (already greatly subsidized) I owe her for December.
b. pay the November outstanding mortgage ($629) on my home that is in some kind of loan modification trial/semi-foreclosure status.
c. Leave the money in the bank to be available for the Jan 1st $1000 withdrawal for my LSAT course....yeah I know i'm already overeducated, but its all useless stuff. i need a transactional skill.
d. Get my daughter and other loved ones gifts for Christmas.

Any suggestions??

Fathers?

Why do men have children they refuse to father? Why don’t you love us enough to come down from your mountain tops and play, laugh, teach us something? How can you expect us to go unto the world and understand or even accept men when our first experience was absence, distance, denial, harshness, discipline? 


How can I forgive you father? How can I release myself from the pain of your mistakes? Why do I have to carry them? If you had lived they would be yours to deal with.It’s been so many years and so many chapters of my life and yet you are a constant. Why can’t I move on from it, from you? I do appreciate you as a man in the world who did certain things, some of them great, all of them interesting and challenging. But that does not recuse you of your great failure to father your children.

And here I repeat history, raising another girl without a father. A father who exists in pictures and stories, too occupied with his own mission, art and other woman to take the time to love his daughter, to show her the kindness and love that a man can offer, that all children should have.

It does no good to wrestle with the dead. For you are dead. We can not work this through. I can never understand you. You will never know me. You can not apologize. Us living can only accept or not, forgive or not, hate or not, forget or not.  

where I came from

Not that I knew what to expect being raised in a communal "family" surrounded by 10 foot walls and 50 brothers and sisters I wasn't related to....well I was related to at least 10 of them. I mean other than the grocery store and an occasional ballet lesson, I never left the compound until I was 11 years old. WHOA!!! What a world out there!