Giving up a good visit (11/24/03)

We are breaking with tradition this year. For quite awhile now we have been traveling to Texas for Thanksgiving. I look forward to it all year as it is usually the only time I get to see my daughter. This year we are staying home. We went to Texas in May for her wedding and it is too expensive to go twice in one year.

We have had many memorable trips to that part of the country. One year she wanted us to bring her bedroom suite down to her. We loaded up a trailer with furniture and towed the car behind. We will never do that voluntarily again!

It was freezing rain when we left. We expected to drive out of it but we never did. The weather kept getting worse and worse. We stopped several places before finding a room for the night. We slid into the parking lot and by that time we didn’t care that we were given a room reeking of cigarette smoke.

Not wanting to go out onto the icy roads again, we called out for pizza. We also called our daughter to tell her where we were and that we would probably be getting in later than expected the next day. An hour or so later we tried to call the pizza place and the phone was dead. My husband said, “What else can go wrong?” Then the lights went out.

Thank goodness it was a smoking room because there were matches in the bathroom. I took out my contacts by matchlight.

The next morning we discovered that both the trailer and the car were welded to the parking lot by a thick layer of ice. When we went in to the desk to see if we could get some help we were told, “Just wait a couple of days, it will melt.” They were serious! As we had to be back at work in a few days that wasn’t an option.

They finally rounded up a hoe and helped us chop the ice away from the tires enough so we could leave. We thought that once we got into Texas the weather would get better. We were wrong. It was the first ice storm Dallas had experienced in who knows how long. The drivers down there obviously didn’t realize the roads were bad because they didn’t bother to slow down below their normal 90 miles an hour. Consequently there were lots of cars and semis in the ditches and median strips.

We were within a few hours of our daughter’s home so we decided to wait until we got there to eat. It was Thanksgiving day and everything was closed anyway. We were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on an overpass in Dallas by late morning. Every time we eased off the brakes we slid sideways. It was the middle of the afternoon before we pulled into her driveway in Fort Worth. It normally only takes an hour or two to get from Dallas to Fort Worth. I think it is fair to say we have never been so relieved to see that girl in our lives! The weather cleared up the day after we got back home.

When she moved to Houston we decided it was better to fly than to try to drive. We meet at her house then we all go over to her boyfriend’s (now husband’s) family’s home for the afternoon. The next day the guys all go out to “the land” to work on a house that is undergoing extensive remodeling. My daughter and I go shopping.

I think I will miss the annual shopping trip more than anything. I enjoy having her all to myself for a few hours. I also enjoy seeing her in her element (the mall).

This year we will stay home. We are scheduled to work the day after Thanksgiving so we won’t be braving the crowds at the mall, nor will be spending the holiday with people we see only once a year.

We don’t miss the freak ice storms in Dallas but we will miss the company of good people who are a part of our daughter’s life. Maybe next year we will brave the airways and fly down for another Texas Thanksgiving.[[In-content Ad]]