HOLLY NADLER

508-274-2329

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

Many of us share a certain horror of travel off-Island. Obviously, the less you go, the greater the horror. Here are my recent misadventures: This past Monday, my stated mission was to travel from Oak Bluffs to Andover, north of Boston, to attend the funeral of my Uncle Fred.

In winter morning darkness, my beloved future ex-husband, Jack, kindly drives me to Vineyard Haven to catch the 7 a.m. ferry. I board the famous 8:06 a.m. Peter Pan bus to South Station. From there I leg it through the freezing streets to Downtown Crossing, where I look around the subway station for a human being behind a glass window selling tokens. I find no humans, no glass windows, and certainly no tokens. It seems that nowadays we’re offered something called a Charlie Card from a bank of machines. I feed dollars into the metal mouths, but they spit them back as if they’re bills I’ve freshly minted in my basement. Finally a uniformed man comes along and transforms $3.50 into a round-trip Charlie Card.

At North Station I need to locate the train to Andover. Again I scan the scene for signs of intelligent life. I notice a black-tinted glass command center behind which a man and a woman work in the dark. Yes, in the dark. They prefer that no one notice them and barrage them with questions. Well, I need to barrage, so I stand inches from the glass and wave my arms. The man gestures around the booth to a speaker the size of a coke bottle cap. He tells me where to go. As I walk away, the woman in the pitch-black booth offers more information over the loud-speaker system: “The next train to Andover leaves at 12:20.” Only 94 minutes to wait.

I sit on a bench and read the library book I’d brought along, American Veda, about Indian spirituality brought to these shores over the past 200 years. Interestingly, for a bookmark I’d pressed into service a postcard of the Virgin Mary from a small but historically rich convent in Paris. I say interestingly from a psychiatric point of view, since I’m off to a strictly conservative Jewish funeral held by a convocation of relatives, including the deceased, who boycotted my own dad’s memorial service in July of 2000. Ah family!

At the Andover train station, the taxi driver taps Temple Emanuel into his hand-held GPS system. A voice the driver calls “Snooki” tells him to turn right, drive straight for .7 miles, turn left into the driveway and Bob’s your uncle! — actually it’s Fred — we’re there.

After the service, I rush up to greet my handful of relatives. The astonishingly ancient great-aunt Leah sits on a bench near the front door. “Aunt Leah?” I ask. “Do I look so changed?” she replies with her customary peevishness. Well, no, but what I’d wanted to blurt was, “I thought you’d be dead by now!” It occurs to me that once she does meet her maker, I and my cousins will be the new older generation.

When we drive to the cemetery in Chelmsford, my cousin Mark pays strict attention to his hand-held GPS named Pudding. Pudding delivers us both to the graveyard (where I lose a glove; I’m pretty sure it got buried with Uncle Fred), then over to cousin Hope’s house back in Andover for the reception.

My new source of neurotic attention is how the heck I’m getting back to Boston that night (I have a room reserved at a B& B on Beacon Hill). Several cousins volunteer to run me over to the Andover train station, but no offers materialize to drive this migrant funeral attendee back into the city. The closest I come to my goal is a shared ride with a Sarasota-bound couple to the airport. This will put me close to the Silver Line where I can use the return part of my Charlie Card. Cool. In the car, the woman pulls out her GPS system which she and her husband have named Pamela. Pamela hauls us on to good old I-93 and pretty soon we’re surrounded by the lights of the city. As you all know, signs to Logan airport are everywhere apparent, but Mrs. Sarasota’s eyes are glued to Pamela’s continuously changing map along with her stern directions: “Go .4 miles, then merge over to the left lane.”

In the back seat, I might as well be a baby strapped into a car carrier. No one hears me read the signs. “Ah, there’s the exit to the airport. Oh, I think we have another shot at the airport if we follow this ramp.” Instead Pamela leads us into a long, long tunnel, and all communication is lost. Mrs. Sarasota swears, knocks her forehead, and designates our situation a nightmare. Finally we see sky overhead. Pamela intones, “Recalculating.” We’re in Roxbury. With amazing expertise, Pamela turns us around and maneuvers us to the airport. I’ve stopped calling attention to the plethora of airport signs.

Finally, an airport bus shuttle and a subway ride later, I’m spit out from the blue line at Government Center. I climb to the top of those cement stairs and ask a young woman with a long blonde ponytail if I should head up or down to reach Joy street and Mt. Vernon Place the most expeditiously. She reaches into her bag. “I just got this Garmin GPS thing!” she says excitedly. Maybe she notices my crestfallen look, because instead she offers, “I’m heading up that way myself. I’ll walk with you.”