Travel Memories

I'm keeping tabs loosely on Tyler and Jaci's cross-country travel. Yesterday I got to talk to both of my boys at once in Dallas. This morning I turned on the news and learned of the horrible weather in New Orleans, where they were headed. I SMS'd Ty to ask if he'd seen the weather reports, and he replied that they had changed their plans. Evidently they're having so much fun in Dallas they decided to stay there a little while longer.

All this travel made me think of the move Terry and I made from Sarasota to Ft. Worth when Scott was five and Tyler three-and-a-half. So here's a short short story for you.

We were living in Sarasota, the four of us in a 2br, 2ba condo of 1000 square feet. I was working as an accompanist for voice lessons at Manatee Junior College and finishing an A.A. degree in piano performance. Terry was Minister of Music and Youth at Kensington Park Baptist Church. He decided he wanted to go back to school to get his D.M.A., and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth was where he wanted to go. (My reaction to that decision is a whole 'nother story that we won't go into here and now.)

We sold our condo and closed six weeks before we had to leave for Texas, so put one set of things into storage, left some antiques with friends, and had a subset of our belongings that we needed to live in a rental house on Siesta Key for the next six weeks. Just after Christmas we left Sarasota, went to Orlando to spend a few days with family, then took off for Texas. We were driving a Volkswagen Rabbit.

I don't remember where we stopped the first night. But the second night we went to Nashville to see friends. From Nashville we headed out I-40 towards Little Rock on a Saturday afternoon. The weather was cold and wet and you know what that can mean in January! As we were listening to the car radio, we heard more and more churches cancelling their Sunday morning services. As we passed Memphis and headed out over the river and into Arkansas, the rain turned to ice. We were in the middle of one of the worst ice storms of the century. We were driving in ice ruts on the interstate, crawling along at about 15 miles per hour. As we neared either Forrest City or Brinkley, we realized we had to pull off. Potty breaks were needed, Tyler was sick to his stomach, and we couldn't just keep driving at 15 mph.

We pulled off and into the parking lot of the only hotel in the area. We got out and walked into the lobby and were told there was no room in the inn. They told us there were a couple of nearby churches that were housing people on the floor of their auditoriums. As we turned to go back to the car, destined to sleep on the floor, a man and woman who had heard our situation came forward. They were traveling on business and had two rooms and were willing to give up one of their rooms for us. Talk about angels in human disguise!

We moved our things into the room and settled down for much-needed sleep. In the middle of the night Tyler started vomiting, and all I could think was what it would have been like if we were in a church auditorium, surrounded by sleeping bodies, trying to get him to the bathroom without spewing all over everyone around us.

My other memories of that trip were of moving the luggage from the back compartment to the front seat and curling up in the luggage space with two little boys, trying to get some sleep. I'm 5'8" and have legs that go all the way to the floor, so you can imagine that was one of the most uncomfortable sleeping experiences of my life.

Driving down I-40 toward Dallas/Ft. Worth on Sunday was visually lovely with all the trees encrusted in ice. But it was sobering to realize what we had been in the night before, and how ugly the situation could have turned.

Now you understand why I'm marking the kids' progress on maps and listening to weather reports. I just want to see them arrive safely in Youngstown.