If I aspire to anything as a parent of grown children, it’s to be unruffled.
“She just goes with the flow,” I want them to say.
I thought I was doing a pretty good job of being Ms. Nonchalant till my daughter-in-law picked me up at the Phoenix airport last month and mentioned we’d all be staying at a hotel for the night.
“The pest control people are fumigating for bedbugs early in the morning,” she explained. “Apparently we brought them back from vacation.”
I tried to look unsurprised, as if I often roomed with bedbugs except when the fumigators were there. But I could feel my anxiety shooting sky-high when she threw my suitcase in the trunk of her car and then reached around to scratch her back.
By the time we were on the freeway, I was wondering how often bedbugs travel from the house to a car, whether they had possibly made the trip from the house to this particular car, and why my back was also starting to itch. I became so engrossed in the possibilities that I hardly noticed she’d pulled in front of the house.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “I’ve got to run back to the office.” I tried to look unfazed.
Isn’t Tempe’s best bookstore practically around the corner?” I asked. “I would really love to go there for lunch and to browse.”
“It may be awhile,” she said.
“I really like books,” said I. “I REALLY like books.”
She drove me there, but I did not look at books. Not even one. Instead, I plugged in my laptop and began Googling everything there was to know about bedbugs.
The results were not comforting. They are very difficult and expensive to get rid of. Sometimes they do get in cars. More than one fumigation treatment may be required. Putting your clothes in the dryer at high heat can kill them. So can special mattress covers. And when traveling, it pays to check the mattresses, box springs, and even behind the headboards and artwork for signs of the critters, which are pictured online in every possible grotesque pose. In other words, pack your flashlight and hold your breath.
None of this information did much for my nonchalance. I tried to be offhanded when I later announced that while they were going to soldier back to the house after the first night, I had decided to stay at the hotel for the entire visit “just to be on the safe side.” When they offered me one of their cars, I developed an urgent need to walk and get exercise.
I probably blew any semblance of cool, calm and collected when my son (ironically nicknamed “Li’l Bug” since childhood) stopped by my hotel room and noticed that I’d covered the places he’d sat the day before with bath towels. I was hoping to suffocate any hitchhikers that had arrived on his jeans. At least I didn’t mention my safe-reentry plan into Columbus: putting my traveling clothes in the dryer and wrapping my suitcase in a giant plastic bag from the hotel cleaning woman before I threw it in my trunk.
Apparently, the plan worked, at least according to the bedbug detection dog I hired here. When I hauled my suitcase and belongings to her the morning after I got home, no critters sent her yapping. She was terminally bored. That was after my dramatic arrival the night before, when I’d stripped in the garage, dashed into the shower, and checked every mattress, box spring and headboard in my own house, in hopes that my adventure would not have an ironic and troubling ending. Happily, it did not.
Certifiably bedbug-free, I have finally stopped itching. And the vacation, at a distance, is beginning to feel like an interesting adventure.
“Great time!” I’ve told Li’l Bug. With all the nonchalance I can muster.
Copyright 2013 Pat Snyder
