Luxembourg Gardens: Pan M. Blair PESSEMIER Oil on canvas 18 x 21 $450.00
Thanksgiving trees Laurie FOX Pessemier Acrylic on canvas 12 x 12 inches
Artnotes: Home for the Holiday
Artnotes and painting fell by the wayside as I flew to
Connecticut for the holiday. It’s our
first Thanksgiving without my Mom, and everyone was a little blue – so Blair
found me a very cheap flight to Connecticut, where I was able to spread a
little holiday cheer.
It was perhaps the worst flight of my life – on the new
airbus 380. Once nestled in seat 49F, on
the ground floor, I tucked my arms into the seatbelt to keep them from flopping
onto my neighbors. King Kong, seated to
my left, was not as thoughtful. A
matchstick girl on my right, who had been en route for more than 40 hours from
Kilamanjaro airport, was friendlier – bumping into one another was ok, actually
a comfort among the 582 passengers on board, 10 across.
The air was so thin, there was a request for “a doctor” as
another passenger seemed to be having a heart attack. I had difficulty breathing, and when the
panic set in I realized we were pitifully deprived of oxygen. Moments after the medical call, puffs of O2
burst forth from the air handling system and I could once again think clearly. The lady beside me told me how she loved
Africa – she’d been there as a volunteer in Tanzinia. “I spent 8 hours sleeping on the floor of the
airport in Sudan due to a delay – no lights, no services,” she told me, “and
then to arrive in Paris to buy a 10 euro sandwich was such a contrast!”
It took 30 minutes to get the plane docked after landing (we
needed a special tractor to bring us to the gate), and another half hour to get
us all off. “Welcome home,” the
passport agent greeted me.
I hopped on the Connecticut Limo with ease. It was already full, and I had to squeeze in
next to a slightly smelly man with an Eastern European accent. A French guy from my flight perched on the
edge of the seat next to me.
We stopped at another terminal for one more. A large, long-haired fellow up front threatened
to “drop” the driver, speaking loudly into his cell phone, if we didn’t get
underway at once. The girl next to him
seemed embarrassed. The Indian we picked
up had six suitcases. There were groans
of outrage in the van. The French guy
and I visited about how we liked New York at Christmas. “Where are you getting off?” he asked.
The Frenchman moved back to the widest row, to the dismay of
the very round couple, dressed in fur with piggy eyes, ensconced there,. The Indian then sat beside me. All
the way home, the Eastern European was poking me in the ribs – “we’re driving
too fast”, he’d hiss. I wished for a seatbelt.
While the driver was arranging the six bags in the rear of
the car, a radio reporter interviewed a woman at a New Jersey turnpike rest
stop. “Yes,” she said enthusiastically, “we’ve
got four adults and a chihauhua in this car.
But I kind of like it, lots of conversation.”
“Like us,” I told our group, “it’s what the holidays are all
about”. You could have heard a pin drop.
The Frenchman and the “tough” longhair debarked in
Greenwich. My smelly seatmate got off in
Shelton. I wished the round woman in her
fur coat a Happy Thanksgiving as her husband chided her “don’t fall” as she
stumbled out of the car in Middlebury. “We’ll
be alright now,” she told me, “now that we are almost home.”
Luxembourg Gardens Boules November Blair PESSEMIER Oil on canvas 9.5 x 12 inches $450.00
