Set with a Somali, Crazy for Camelot

The Somali airport van driver who dropped my Mom off at my apartment yesterday reassured us both that when it's time for me to return to Minnesota, he can surely find a Somali man for me to wed. What a relief!

I am so mean to my mom, partly because I see in her all of the poor travelling habits that I've been working years to shed. Caprice on wheels-- she overpacks, arrives late without excuse, forgets to phone ahead, makes last minute announcements and generally behaves as if she had an entourage and a team of porters at her command, instead of one carless daughter and a sister with a husband in the hospital. I imagine Mom, who was raised in a red dirt road town with seven siblings, got this way after reading about Jackie Kennedy's 1962 trip to India. Mom was crazy for Camelot. Now she's in the suburbs with her sister and there's not a press corp or an elephant in site.