Grounded
Waiting is familiar to me. Having traveled so much, I am used to unplanned downtime in inconvenient or uncomfortable places knowing that sometimes it is the necessary course to a better place.
14 days ago, I sat in this hospital for 12 hours waiting for my father to get out of surgery. He was in with cancer and the doctors were removing the tumor. I anticipated that the end result would be a better quality of life, to be sustained for another five, ten, maybe even twenty years. It turned out that the surgery was too late. The cancer had already spread to his brain and is now inoperable. I don't know how much time we have... could be 2 weeks, could be 2 months. For now, the great big world I happily move around in has been reduced to room 6N29 in New Brunswick, NJ and armchair travel.
So I'm reading while I'm waiting... Travels with Charley, Maximum City, Paris Out Of Hand, Amsterdam, The Art Of Travel
...and hoping for a miracle.
