Fit To Be Untied

The summer after my father died my mother did something bold and adventurous—she took me on an African safari. It wasn't just the two of us (she was not that bold); the trip was sponsored by a group: the same outfit—Alumni Flights Abroad (AFA)—with which we had traveled to the Orient (and yes, people called it that in 1974) along with my father the previous summer. While AFA did not strictly limit its voyagers to graduates of the 34 top-flight colleges in whose magazines it advertised (a limited number of "referrals" were accepted), it did attract a more intellectual crowd than your average organized tour. So, after a miserable spring vacation (booked before my father's death) at Far Horizons, the Florida gulf coast resort where we had gone as a family for years, a trip suffused in grief and awash in the painful flow and still more painful ebb of memories, Mom and I were off to Africa and the lush, green rolling hills (according to AFA's itinerary) of Lake Naivasha.

Our first stop was New York (as our overseas flight left not from O'Hare but JFK), and we went a couple of days early to take in some Broadway shows. I would have to consult my journals to recall which plays we saw—one was likely Leonard Bernstein's musical version of Candide—and we stayed at our favorite little (then unpretentious, now boutique) hotel, The Lowell, on East 63rd Street. The rooms were small, with worn gray carpet and yellowish walls, and they smelled of bleached linen. There was no view. The hotel was home to a large number of older permanent residents, and its tiny lobby was the domain of Rudy, who served as doorman, bellman, elevator operator, and giver of advice. Rudy knew New York, and though my fastidious, forward-thinking mother would have done so anyway, he warned us to leave extra time to get to the airport for our flight to London, as there was "always a bottleneck [he pronounced it bah-ullneck, without the "t"s] on the Van Wyck." On the morning of our departure, Rudy hailed us a cab, and we headed for JFK, a good six hours or so before takeoff.

It turned out we would need every minute of it. Not because of the bottleneck, though we might have experienced it had we actually taken the Van Wyck, which fell along the logical route. No. We were not delayed by traffic but by the one cab driver in Manhattan who did not know how to find the airport. Now, you are thinking maybe the driver was new to America or didn't speak much English. Wrong. He was, as I remember, a nerdy, long-haired, slightly disheveled (in the way of academia, not poverty) young man, born and bred here, who drove us in what seemed to be ever-widening circles around our destination. As we passed Coney Island the second time, and a trip that should have taken 40 minutes or so had stretched into and hour and a half, my mother asked if he knew where he was going.

"I know where the airport is," he stammered.

"Yes," she said, "but do you know how to get there?" A more refined question.

"Don't worry, I'll find it."

"Well you'd better," she quipped. "We're leaving on an international flight at six tonight."

"Where to?"

"London, then Nairobi."

The driver nodded. More minutes passed, after which he finally said something like, "You know, I think I am actually lost."

At which point my mother lost it. "Oh Shit!"

"Lady!"

"Don't lady me. How can you drive a taxi if you don't know how to find the airport?"

"Lady, this isn't my real job. I have a Ph.D. in political science."

"Well! A political science major should know how to read a map."

He had no response to this, just a slight shake of his curly-haired head.

"Shit on you for getting lost," she said. "Shit on you. Just find the airport, so we don't miss our flight."

My mother was, to use one of her favorite phrases, fit to be tied.

I'm not sure how we eventually found the airport, but it probably involved our driver stopping and asking someone for directions.

Upon arriving in London the next morning, we learned our connecting flight to Nairobi was delayed, causing us to spend an unbearably hot night at the Grosvenor House, near the Greenwich Meridian, before landing not too far from the equator. Unfortunately Lake Naivasha, which we boated across under leaden clouds and persistent drizzle, was anything but lush, and the only creatures we encountered those first two days were cormorants, perched on what looked like dead trees rising out of the lake's dark water. But the adventures that ensued, the marvels we experienced, are worthy of another story.

My father was dead, and six months later my mother and I were in Africa, lodging in lodges, descending into Ngorongoro Crater, learning about Leakey's discoveries in Olduvai Gorge, driving in VW vans across the Serengeti plain. What could be more surreal?

My mother may have been fit to be tied when our cab driver couldn't find Kennedy Airport, but as the trip and its wonders progressed, it was clear she had untied the knot of our grief, and, despite the magnitude of our loss, given us something to smile about.

Photo: Thomas G. Fiffer, 1975, age 10