A five hour flight was made to seem like ten hours thanks to a squalling baby in the row of seats behind me, who would not be silenced. And she had one of those piercing cries that cuts right through earbuds. I may invest in a pair of sound-muffling headphones, because this is the second time it's happened, this month. Fortunately, they got off in Vegas.
Can't blame the parents, for this; they looked shell-shocked, they were so tired. Some babies are just screamers. My grandmother could have shut the kid up, I'm almost certain. She was a nurse in the newborn wing of Nix Hospital in San Antonio for 30 years and learned all kinds of tricks on how to settle a cranky infant.
She would go home with new mothers, on her days off or vacation, to make extra money...and it seemed all the kids she took care of that way turned out fine and easy to handle. I told her on many occasions she ought to write a book about it, but she shrugged me off. I thought for a while she was making up how good she was, but when she died over a hundred people she'd taken care of showed up to pay respects at her memorial...and some were actually in mourning. They'd been maintaining light contact with her, for years. It was the loveliest tribute she could have had.
She didn't have a funeral; she donated her body to science as a way to cheat the undertaker, and her ashes were given to us once they were done. She's buried near her sister by the San Antonio River on the south side of town. We were able to get a plot not far from her for my mother's burial spot...27 years later.
Me, when I die I want my ashes mixed into a cement block and put in the ocean for coral to grow on. That way I'll feel like I finally did a good deed for the planet.
If there still is one when I hit that point.
Can't blame the parents, for this; they looked shell-shocked, they were so tired. Some babies are just screamers. My grandmother could have shut the kid up, I'm almost certain. She was a nurse in the newborn wing of Nix Hospital in San Antonio for 30 years and learned all kinds of tricks on how to settle a cranky infant.
She would go home with new mothers, on her days off or vacation, to make extra money...and it seemed all the kids she took care of that way turned out fine and easy to handle. I told her on many occasions she ought to write a book about it, but she shrugged me off. I thought for a while she was making up how good she was, but when she died over a hundred people she'd taken care of showed up to pay respects at her memorial...and some were actually in mourning. They'd been maintaining light contact with her, for years. It was the loveliest tribute she could have had.
She didn't have a funeral; she donated her body to science as a way to cheat the undertaker, and her ashes were given to us once they were done. She's buried near her sister by the San Antonio River on the south side of town. We were able to get a plot not far from her for my mother's burial spot...27 years later.
Me, when I die I want my ashes mixed into a cement block and put in the ocean for coral to grow on. That way I'll feel like I finally did a good deed for the planet.
If there still is one when I hit that point.
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