For weeks I looked forward to this day: We would go on a trip! The first since months! Our private Lockdown has already started in January with Victor’s first heart surgery. But now we would go to the lovely Napa Valley, up where us friends for lunch, had invited. The Restaurant would comply with all safety provisions that apply in this country still. Not even flower decorations on the tables were allowed. We would sit quite apart, placed on the terrace, and the masks just for the food store. The Restaurant is located about one and a half hours to the North, between rolling hills and vineyards nestled. I was as thrilled as a child on the journey. In the wine country, it is also warmer than in the foggy San Francisco, which meant that I could be one of my sad in the closet withering summer wear dresses. Since my car had given up some time ago, the spirit, would we go with Victor’s old Truck. I love the rides in this rattling mobile. It is so old that it still has a cassette compartment. In the back seat with a box of case-less cassettes is completely faded inscriptions, we play a kind of musical Roulette.
But then also the loyalty of the Truck jumped. Victor couldn’t find his jumper cables, our neighbors were also overwhelmed with the number of the breakdown service is constantly busy. Our friends were left in their own car, also in order to protect Victor and his lack of immune system as well as possible. They were already at the bridge, when I called you. And then it happened: I began to tremble, and could Express myself barely understandable, and broke then to my own horror, in tears.
My friend tried to calm me down while her husband drove to the next Parking lot. I was standing next to me and watched me stunned. It’s only a car, Moser is. In the worst case, you missed an invitation to lunch! But I couldn’t stop crying. My girlfriend remained calm. As an hour passed, and still no roadside service was there, she waited with her husband still in the Parking lot in front of the bridge and the window of time in which the Restaurant was open for lunch, slowly the castle. Of Cancel and Move you wanted to hear: she has a travel Agency and has been for months, only to Cancel and Move. “Nothing is impossible” is her Motto. And she was right: of Course, the breakdown service appeared sometime however, and as the jumper cables didn’t work, he replaced the short hand and against a couple of Hundred dollars – the whole battery. I had calmed down again, but I was ashamed for my outburst. “You’re only human”, comforted me, Victor. True, I thought. It is not nothing, what we have experienced in the last few months. Let us nothing. Let’s be patient a bit, a bit generous. With each other, but also with ourselves.
And then we were on the way. I put randomly in the cassette, on the one twenty years younger Victor told his friends jokes.
