You may be shaking your head and thinking, “No, Jeanne. That is not how it goes. It is supposed to be ‘ Life is just a bowl of cherries.’ Only sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes life is not a bowl of cherries and things get turned upside down and backwards and not how we planned or expected. Artist Mary Engelbreit understands.
Upside down and backwards and not at all how we planned was how our Thanksgiving was this year.
It is a three day drive to get to our daughter’s in Massachusetts. When we were younger we could make it in two or when we were really much younger it could have been one long haul. But we just can’t do those 15 hour drives any longer. Our bodies say, “No. No. No.” So an overnight stop in Woodstock, Virginia was just right to conclude Day One of the journey north.
Yes, Day One was just fine. We were so excited to be going to see our daughter and grandchildren. We were in a festive and thankful mood. We stopped in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Tom’s hometown, for a visit to Central Market to pick up some Lebanon bologna and then Hammond’s Pretzels to pick up two boxes of pretzels. We had planned to visit Tom’s cousin and her husband but got word right before our trip that they had Covid. Oh no! We will have to hope for a visit next year.
We stopped at the cemetery where Tom’s mother and grandparents are buried. The final stop in Lancaster was to go by the house where Tom grew up. It was a great stop as Tom connected with the young woman who is renovating the house and hopefully bringing it back to its original beauty. After an hour plus of conversation and looking around the site, we headed off for a quick stop at Starbucks and time to get back on the road.
The traffic was bumper to bumper as the evening skies began to darken. Suddenly there was a loud THUMP to the left side of our car and when I looked over all I could see was the side of an enormous dump truck crashing into the side of our car and pushing us off the road.
Car accidents, even when not deadly, are traumatic. We were off to the side of the road and fortunately the dump truck driver pulled over and stopped. The good news is that no one was injured. Shaken up, but not physically hurt. The driver of the dump truck readily admitted that he was at fault. You could tell that he felt terrible about the accident.
Calls were made to the State Highway Patrol and to our insurance agent. The State Trooper who came (it took only about 30 minutes) was very nice and wrote up the accident report. Someone from the Pennsylvania highway department Safety Patrol had also been summoned as they help in accidents such as ours. She was also incredibly kind.
I will say that it was quite terrifying to be beside a busy interstate as it gets darker and darker and the cars seemed to be whizzing by faster and faster. It was only with the help of the State Trooper and the Safety Patrol officer that we were able to get back on the highway at all.
The good news is that there does not seem to be significant damage to our car though we won’t know that for certain until we take the car in to the Toyota dealer and then to the bodyshop.
We made it to a hotel for the night as the car seemed fine to drive. So Day Two on the road was not one of our better days.
The next morning as we were driving along a piece of gravel flew up off the road and cracked our front windshield. Hmmm…guess we will be going to a glass shop as well. Two more pieces of gravel would hit our windshield over the course of the journey so, yes, we will definitely be replacing our front windshield.
It was pure joy to arrive at our daughter’s home and hug her and our grandchildren. We were all very excited about Thanksgiving and very, very thankful that we had not been injured in an accident that could have been so much worse.
We arrived on Saturday and by Sunday our daughter was not feeling well. She went to work on Monday as we went to face the madness at Market Basket to get groceries for the Thanksgiving feast. Two friends, Vickie, whom was a dear friend from seminary days, and her husband Hank would join us on Thursday and we were all looking forward to being together. Plus Hank was baking a pumpkin pie! Yum!
But I got a text from my daughter on Monday while she was at work saying she did not feel well and was going to go to bed when she got home. Uh-oh. Yep. Sounded like Covid. Been there, done that, no fun that.
And Covid it was. She quarantined as best she could in her bedroom. We were at a hotel. The kids went off to stay at their father’s house and sadly, a phone call was made to friends to let them know that Covid had essentially cancelled our Thanksgiving.
We did cook the turkey on Wednesday and made a few other goodies (deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, a purchased key lime pie) so there would be food in the refrigerator for our daughter when she felt like eating.
And we headed back down the highway towards home. The rest of the trip was smooth. Driving on Thanksgiving Day was quite easy as there were very few trucks on the road and not all that many cars.
We were sad about all that had happened but also incredibly grateful to be alive and to know that all that was damaged could be repaired. Not everyone is so fortunate. We realize that there is a great deal to give thanks for even on this strange and convoluted Thanksgiving adventure.
Our daughter has now tested negative after a relatively mild bout of Covid (she had Covid once before—at Thanksgiving two years ago!!) and thankfully she has also been vaccinated.
This thanksgiving was not a joyful bowl of cherries but we realize that even when life hands you a chair full of bowlies, there is blessing in that as well. Or as Reba McEntire suggests:
Wow, what a week. Glad you’re all OK. All our kids were elsewhere for Thanksgiving, so we headed to the beach for a quiet weekend. We arrived Tuesday night to discover that our refrigerator had been off for at least a month after the power company replaced an outside box. Rotten moldy food, an incredible world of insects at all stages of life, and the smell! The person who checks our house hadn’t noticed it (!) of the clouds of flies and puddle of goo under the refrigerator door. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it worked but the cleanup took a couple days. We’re buying a new one.
Well, that is more excitement than anyone needs for a holiday! Glad all ended well. Can certainly see how tense the highway incident was. How nice that those called to help did so very well. All this confirms our general commitment to NEVER travel on big holidays!