Those 70ish Girls

GRANDMA DRIVES A PORSCHE BY Valerie Halla

When I flew into LAX this past weekend, I waited outside on the busy sidewalk in a pre-holiday rush of cars, trucks, buses, vans and people for my son to pick me up. I had some time to kill so I did serious “people watching” observing whatever caught my interest. Many good looking young folks held up signs high above their heads looking at many vehicles go by. All at once a limousine or big black van would pull out from the stream of traffic and pull up to people with the signs, popping the trunk and setting their luggage in the back, then they’d get inside and go off with the chauffeur.

One such example caught my eye off to my left. A brand new, sleek, prominently purple, modern Porsche sedan pulled over with a thin, grey haired older sporty-type woman jumping out. She “jumped out” in the slimmest use of the word. She was also slim, but she didn’t jump. She smiled broadly at the four people on the sidewalk and the youngest one ran over to hug the older lady while the only man there wrangled many pieces of luggage and backpacks into the shiny car trunk. All of them smiled big loving broad smiles. The women all got into the car as the man finished struggling and he got into the snazzy car sitting in the shotgun spot. He looked like he felt good to be occupying shotgun position even though he was puffing mildly. The veteran lady driver’s face beamed with delight as she maneuvered the slick car out into heavy traffic. This was LA traffic which has a life of its own and is crazier than any country lane by a thousand times.

They were all clearly happy to be riding with this queenly older Porsche gal, in a $150,000 automobile being carted off to what I imagined to be her mansion in the Malibu neighborhood or possibly Brentwood or amongst the Beverly Hills mansions, probably at some location a gazillion miles away from where I live and where I drive my 2010 Camry with 223,000 miles on it.

It was a beautiful quick weekend visit with my son. I was visiting him because he had to work over Christmas and I wanted to bring his gifts. That weekend was his only time off. It purpose was pure fun.

We crammed a lot into two days. We went out to a Korean Market for snacks and some refreshments before heading to a Hot Pot Holiday dinner put on by my son’s friends. We decided at the last minute or maybe in a New York minute to stop at a cozy coffee shop for hot chocolate since we had time to spare. There’s always time for hot chocolate! It was a place called The Loft and it looked like some movie set as we walked in. The place had long, heavy, deeply dark colored drapes covering the big windows and three huge mirrors hung along one wall vertically, distinctly hanging out from the wall at the tops. There were a few dark corners with small tables placed here and there- some here by the window, some over there underneath the mirrors. It felt like a horror film’s main room, a dark cavernous living room that hid many stories. We sat upstairs in the loft.

We ordered two hot cocoas and headed up the stairs to the equally dark and mysterious loft.

Next we headed to a tiny apartment to visit my son’s friends for a Hot Pot Dinner treat.