My final travel day is a long one, though it begins well enough with coffee at the GET café in downtown Narberth, a short walk from Ann and Barry’s home.  The café is staffed by disabled workers who work carefully, deliberately, and cheerfully to get every order right, and after a couple of attempts, they do.  A fine, important opportunity for both staff and patrons to practice inclusiveness, this GET café.  We take our coffee and croissant, together with uplifted spirits, to a sidewalk table across from the Thai restaurant whose proprietor clearly has a green thumb.  Good for Narberth.

Back home, Connor again assists with my suitcases, and I take off, at first alarmed by a persistent thumping that I fear means a flat tire.  After a few blocks, however, this abates, and I chalk the noise up to my GTI’s having been stationary, parked on the same hot pavement unmoved for two days.  I fire up (curiously antiquated metaphor for electronics!) the gps, and Google gal gets me through Philadelphia and into Princeton surprisingly quickly.  My intention is to retrace my original route south, and head north from Princeton to the Tappan Zee bridge, but somehow, I cannot find my way onto Route 206 north, and end up on the dreaded approach to the George Washington Bridge spanning the Hudson in a nightmarish tangle of traffic allowing for no exit.  Less than ideal, this.

I cope by kicking my request for assistance up a notch from Google gal, asking right out loud for supernatural protection from David and all the ancestors gone before.  That (or something else) works, and I do make it all the way home with only gas prices ($5.849 per gallon at my last stop) to complain about. 

It’s a grueling 8-hour drive, the longest I’ve been behind the wheel on a single day this trip, having sworn off the 13-14-hour jaunts of my youth.  Google gal does help me avoid tailbacks on both I-495 and I-95, however, diverting me toward Manchester and Routes 101 and 127, the very familiar—and easy–way home from Manchester Airport.  I get back before sundown, fill the bird feeders, and with celebratory glass of wine in hand, survey the grass that needs cutting before dinner back at my grandparents’ dining table, feeling grateful.

Home again. Back to all the comforts and responsibilities of that home, back to taking up once again the burden of organizing my solo life; it is the third anniversary of my husband’s death.   I will think about that, and lessons learned over the past 19 days, looking for correspondences and insights, for the next month and beyond.