We started our journey on Monday, February 2nd. Our goal the first day was the reach Clarksville, TN to see my grandmother. Little did we know that would set the pace for the rest of the trip, we ended up driving 12 hours each day. We stayed in Clarksville on Tuesday and began driving again on Wednesday. We drove for four days and thankfully had no car troubles and were not pulled over at any point.
On Monday morning we woke up about 7am. First Derek received a call from his mother, saying “hi” and talking to him about the Superbowl the night before. My mother then called to us to let us know the time, clearly hitting snooze was not an option at this point. We had some breakfast and packed up the car.
We knew from the day before that we had over packed. We had both looked at the pile of stuff in the old apartment and said, “I think we have too much stuff, the car isn’t that big.” Sure enough, we were right. We were trying to plan in case we had to go for a few days without our furniture. We had a tent, sleeping bags, food, tray tables, computer, folding chair, and countless other things that were just not going to fit in the car. We threw out a bunch of the things we deemed unimportant and easy to replace. My parents are now the proud owners of the tent and sleeping bags which they will never use. We also left a few bags my mother agreed to ship to us later.
After packing the car we gave hugs and said goodbye to my family. My mother informed Derek he had better have me back in a year. The tears start to come and I left as quickly as I could to not start blubbering. Of course this leads me to take a right when I should have taken a left and started the trip off on the right note!
The first state we hit was West Virginia. We only had to go through the state for about 13 miles and of course we missed the only turn we had to make and had to stop and get directions. After getting directions in 7-11 Derek decides to bring out the GPS. I know everyone reading is asking what took so long, and I cannot answer that.
After three hours of driving Derek takes over and we listen to War of the Worlds radio program. It was so much fun to listen to and definitely worth picking up if you were not around to hear the original broadcast. I then started dozing off, for about an hour I was in an out of consciousness. All I know for sure is every time I opened my eyes nothing changed. Everything in Virginia looked exactly the same. My family made the drive to Clarksville, TN a bunch of times when I was a kid and I remember hating Virginia. The state feels like it goes on for forever! I have now learned that Virginia is not even close to being the most boring state to drive through.
As we were leaving Virginia and heading into Tennessee we hit a nice snow storm. It was fitting since we won't be seeing snow for a while. Thankfully it was still early afternoon so there were not many other cars on the road at the time.
As soon as we reached my grandmother’s house Derek noted that it looked like we hadn’t gone anywhere. He said if you had told him we were in Glen Burnie, MD he would have believed you. We sat and talked to Grammy for a few minutes and then decided we needed to do a quick workout. We were exhausted and our legs were feeling a little numb from sitting all day. We went out back and started doing some exercises. I can say that while our motivation was down I am so glad we went out and did this. I think this exercising at night was what made driving for such long periods of time possible.
As soon as we are done and got back in the house the phone was ringing. Oh crap, I forgot to call and let my mother know we had made it. As I am on the phone my grandmother is bringing out medical bills for me to try and figure out on the phone! We just got there and already I am being put to work. I have no idea what I am looking at, the dates don’t match up and we had just driven 12 hours so mom gets the necessary information from me so she can call about them the next day.
I hang up the phone and the next thing I know Grammy is trying to shovel food in our faces. She had bought vanilla ice cream for Derek and apple pie for me. Since she bought them that meant we had to eat some and she was not going to stop mentioning it until we had. After she went to bed I brought out the pie and found that it was in fact not purchased just for me, she had already eaten a slice. For a woman that says she doesn’t like sweets I found that she ate a lot of sweets in a day and a half.
The very best part about my grandmother’s house is the space heater in the bathroom. You turn it on a jump in the shower, when you come out the room is still nice and warm! No cold breeze and frantic towel drying necessary. I showed Derek around the house and told him some of the memories I have as a kid staying there. When I was a kid my sister and I had to sleep out in the living room on one particular trip. In the dining room, in plain view of the living room is a picture of Jesus. This is no ordinary photo of Jesus, not even an ordinary photo of Jesus with the crown of thorns; this is the darkest most tortured photo I have ever seen. In the daytime it is intense let alone at night when the only light in the room seems to be on this picture. Derek took a photo of this picture that haunted me on that one particular trip…
.JPG)
No comments:
Post a Comment