Seeing Courtney off to Ankara, Turkey last night was exactly the way it has been every time he has left for a conference. I end up doing all the packing – washing, ironing, and planning – while Courtney tries to tie together his paper, last minute. As the car to pick him up approaches, he starts typing faster and faster as if it’s going to make a difference. The paper is never quite finished, and he’s never quite ready.
The fact that all flights from Cairo seem to leave in the middle of the night wasn’t helpful this time either. He made me stay up with him and wait for the car. At 10:30 pm I fell asleep on the couch, and was woken up several times by frustrated pacing back and forth in the living room, accompanied by loud rants about the quality of his paper and scholarship in general. About ten minutes before departure, he threw on his clothes and we commenced the frenetic search for those last minute items – things I had told him yesterday to make sure he had - all the while he repeated his rant; how the paper is awful, how he shouldn’t be going, how not ready he is to face Paul Guyer with this... this piece of unfinished incoherence, and how... really; why in the world is he doing philosophy at all? It’s too difficult!
Eventually it was all there; the Mickey Mouse bag accommodating toiletries, a suit and appropriate clothing for five days in Ankara, and the laptop bag with our beloved laptop containing an almost finished paper, passport, tickets, money, arrival information and the conference program. At 1:02 am I went downstairs in the elevator with him, and his driver was already waiting. “Bye honey, I love you!” we said, and then he was gone. The worst was over.
As always, he will get there and somehow he’ll participate in the conference and give a brilliant paper, everyone will like him, he’ll make a bunch of new acquaintances and friends, have a great time and return with an immense passion for philosophy and scholarship.
In the meantime, the boys & I will do what we always do while Courtney is enjoying Kant scholarship away from home; we’ll scrub the house from top to bottom and go shopping, enjoy the Swedish cooking less favored by Courtney, watch movies, go swimming and running, and go to sleep all together in my big bed every night under a mountain of books.
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1 comment:
The best part about being left behind on a business trip is always the food! I remember when i was a kid and my father left town we could order pizza and chinese food and eat high cholesterol food he wasn't allowed. And now when my husband goes away its the same thing: all the yummy foods he can't or won't eat.
Let them be the world travelers - we can have clean houses and yummy good!
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