Country road, take me home

“Yes mom, I will be there in time for Sunday dinner,” I told my mother on Friday.

I hang up the phone and rub my eyes as I look at my appointment book. I have appraisers and inspections booked, two closings next week and an endless stack of Internet correspondence to complete, not to mention the major renovation project going on in my home. I’m not certain I can even find my suitcases through all of the dust. How would I cover the 735 miles to a Southern beach town by Sunday at 1:00 p.m.?

I pause for a moment, trying to organize my thoughts and time. I sit back in my office chair and glance at the colorful photos of lighthouses I have collected on my walls. A wooden peg leg pirate sits on the corner of my desk and reminds me of happy times I have spent watching the sea.

“No matter what,” I say to myself, “I’m not going to disappoint my mother. Besides I’m Aunt Di, I have my brother’s babies to spoil.”

I start to plot and plan how to start earlier and work later and leave on Saturday morning.

Well, the best-laid plans never work out and it’s already Saturday morning and both my daughter and I are still working. My first appointment runs late and makes the last two appointments late. It’s almost 2:30 p.m. in the afternoon when I finally finish with my last client. I’m running out of travel light and I still have to pick up my daughter from work. She knows that I’ve been insane over time this week and has ordered lunch and snacks for the ride. I ponder that if I drive until 9:00 p.m., then we can get up early finish the trip and still make it to Rock Hill, South Carolina by 1:00 p.m. on Sunday.

Rather than listen to my daughter’s music or her mine, I select a10-hour audio tape of Harry Potter. That’s just about the whole drive if I don’t stop much. We pop the tape in and head south. My mind drifts back to another Easter trip many years ago.

I am on my way home from the beach with my two toddlers. I remember thinking how nice it was since both children were sleeping in their car seats. Nice and calm; that was until I hit Washington DC and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Okay, I think I can handle it except that the air conditioner stopped working and the car is getting hot. I am about to open the window when I hear a tiny voice behind me.

“Mommy, can you hold this?”

Being a young mom and naive to the art of travel with toddlers, I reached my hand back, only to have a warm diaper deposited into it. It’s 100 degrees outside and I’m in bumper-to-bumper traffic sitting with a diaper in my hand. I hit the window button. Silly me, I never thought to wonder how the kid could hand me the diaper while in the car seat. I thought that they were busy, but I know they had been hard at work. The older one had sprung the younger one and taught her how to plaster Easter grass to the ceiling of the car. As the wind hits the back seat area, the Easter grass starts to fly. I am in sort of a snow globe of grass, holding onto a diaper in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I look in the mirror to see the delight of my darlings as they try to catch the floating plastic. Some of it was stuck to my head and eyebrows.

“Isn’t it all pretty, Mommy?”

Oh yes, those where the good old days. It sure makes a ten-hour Harry Potter book tape a pleasure!

Finally we arrive, with two minutes to spare. Everyone is there. My stepfather’s entire family and my brother Bill and his family. Kids are running all over the yard collecting shiny eggs, filled with pennies. The youngest one has found one with a dollar in it. We sit around feasting on Southern-style food, mixed with treats that would make any of our Greek ancestors proud. We toasted, laughed and shared memories well into the night.

Once again as I sit here on this steamy Easter Sunday night, sipping on some freshly brewed sweet tea, far off in the distance amidst the backdrop deep blue, a bolt of lightning flashes. The troubles of time are wiped away as I am reminded of just how magnificent and fragile each moment and memory is. Tonight I am tired from the long drive yet so thankful for not having to miss this feast with the people in my world that I hold so dear.