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The thought enters my mind on Tuesday, January 10th, when Dad emails me a couple digital photos of Mom sitting at her fancy new sewing machine, down in their winter home at Alamo, Texas.
For over 20 winters now, my parents have been enjoying the climate and hospitality of that southern territory. It seems like a second home to Allan and me, also, having taken many winter trips there over the years with our kids, without our kids, with other family, with friends.
So, I'm looking at Mom across the miles, fingering her quilt pieces, unaware that Dad has poked his head around the door with his camera, and my heart aches to be in the familiar surroundings. I realize that nothing at the moment is keeping me in Victoria. The Gazette is out. The billing is done. The Christmas tree is back in the box.
On Thursday, January 12th, I check online and find two reasonably priced roundtrip tickets on a charter flight to Harlingen, Texas. I persuade Allan to take a few vacation days, and then I call Mom and Dad to see if it's a good time to visit them.
On Monday, January 16th, Allan and I land in Harlingen and rent a PT Cruiser. At 4 p.m. that afternoon we ring the doorbell to their home at the Alamo Country Club. The sky is blue and the sun is bright on this day, the very day of my mother's 79th birthday.
It is good once again to touch and see and talk. "The flight was late … There is snow on the ground in Minnesota … Sure is windy in Texas … Lots of overcast days in Victoria … The rabbits are still running … The pecan pie is warm … Grapefruit trees are loaded … We want to take you out for your birthday."
Mom and I order salmon, Dad orders spaghetti with meat sauce, Allan orders a steak sandwich. We talk about the kids and the grandkids and catch up on things since they left Minnesota in October. The wait staff at the Olive Garden comes to our table and sings Happy Birthday. Mom gets shy but enjoys it. We can't eat very much of the chocolate birthday cake.
Over the next couple of days we play bridge and 500 at the kitchen table, rotat-ing partners. We also eat a lot of food at that table, including savory breakfast sausage with our morning coffee, fresh fruit, chewy rice krispie bars with peanuts, Belgian cookies, tiny fruitcakes with a red cherry on top, delicious seafood salad, the fresh pecan pie with ice cream, a traditional lutefisk dinner with melted butter, a bottle of wine. It doesn't get any better than that.
Allan and I take a couple of long walks around the golf course, not just for exercise but also to enjoy the Texas temperature and soak up some sun. Mom shows me that her sewing machine does fancy embroidery all by itself. Amazing. Allan figures out how to download some new designs. Mom's next quilt will be another masterpiece.
We visit Mexico, parking on the U.S. side and walking over the Rio Grande, throwing coins over the bridge to begging children and adults on the shore of the Mexican side. "Gratias, Senora!" "Gratias, Senor!" "Gratias!" "Gratias!"
Sidewalks are packed with winter Texans and vendor Mexicans. We shop for good deals on chiclets and silver and medicine. There are more pharmacias than bathrooms. Trinkets, colorful pottery, jewelry, and nativity sets are nearly identical from one shop to the next.
The bakery is different, however. The aroma of fresh rolls and donuts is thick when we open the door. We find an empty table at the popular place and one of several very busy Mexican waiters brings four cups and pours us fresh black coffee that goes well with the pastries we've chosen. The raised sugar donut is moist sticky good.
We eat dinner a few doors down, on the second floor of Angel's. Allan and I scarf down our seafood enchiladas like we are starving. We drink the margaritas like we are dying of thirst.
The four of us relax and reminisce about our trip to Europe together in 1997, how we climbed four flights of stairs every morning and night for five days in our London flat, how we ate bagettes on our bed in Paris and climbed more stairs in the Arch de Triumph and walked the Champs-Elysees from the Eifel Tower to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa.
The reminiscing carries us to the battleground at Normandy Beach, where Dad surveyed the cemetery filled with thousands of his American peers. Then we motored to Belgium with me at the wheel, and I matched (exceeded?) the speed of the Europeans. We danced till midnight at a Belgian roadway inn and the caretaker's sloppy dog joined us. We had fun with Father Ferdinand Jennen at Hasselt and his sisters and their families. We stayed at a hotel on the North Sea of Holland and fell asleep listening to the fog horns.
Remembering is a good part of this life and also the next. Our eternal souls, after all, consist of memory as well as intellect and will.
Texas creates good memories for Mom and Dad outside of those made when raising Minnesota children, corn, and soybeans. Dad's birthday card to Mom this year spoke of how together they found a peaceful corner of the world and together they get to enjoy it.
I captured a bit of our 2006 Texas Interlude online in Sue's Album. Seems fitting to end our trip with online photos, since that's how it began. Thank you, good parents, for everything today as well as yesterday, especially good memories.
~Sue
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