Slightly nervous and a bit tense up, that’s how I felt when I was on the way to meet my brother-in-law, or precisely, my husband’s brother-in-law at the airport.

For the record, I have no in-law issues. There were other reasons for me to be a kind of edgy. First, it’s my first time to meet him. And I always feel a little nervous around the people I first meet. Second, I was tired. Right after getting my husband home from the hospital, I was heading to the airport immediately. It’s already late. I really hated to drive at night, especially I had to drive really fast. And the last but not the least, my brother-in-law is a Japanese-American. I’d been working on my oral English for a year or two, however, I wasn’t sure I could handle such a situation.

For another time, I would appreciate such opportunity to use my English. But not now. The timing was not right. Everything was not right.

After him, my husband’s sister would also come the next day. They would stay with us about a week. My husband hadn’t seen his sister, who immigrated to the US many years ago, for a long time. He was so excited about this visit and planned almost everything ahead: where to take them around, where to eat. He was between jobs, so it would be easy for him to ask some days off.

However, since he went to the hospital because of slip disk, everything had to change.

It had been two weeks since he got sick. Getting better but slowly, he was still not discharged from the hospital and he needed to spend most of time in bed. However, when we arrived at home, to our great dismay we found that the elevator was broken down, which meant that he had to climb 5 floors---bad luck does happen in chain.

Now, I just hope this climbing won’t make things worse.

I finally arrived at the airport. If my husband would be there, he would do all the talking—even he could only phrase a few broken words in English. I had no doubt about that. However, now it was just me. Signed, I got off the car.