Yesterday I saw a facebook post from a friend of mine, Spencer Day. (Confession- we're not actually friends. I saw him sing once at a concert and became his fan on facebook.) He had just released some Christmas songs on itunes (
Check them out here!) and the title caught my eye. "If Christmas Doesn't Kill Me." That's funny, right? And we all love funny songs sung by amazing voices. He asked people to share crazy Christmas stories. For the most part, my holidays are the same every year. Santa and food and peace and joy. But I do have one that didn't go as well. It was way too long to post there, but I told him I'd share it. (and, by extension, his music.)
This is an excerpt from my book- in it's final edits- called "Hope Springs." Those of you who may have come here from Spencer's page (Hi!) need a little background information. The book is a memoir that follows my husband and I in our first year of trying to conceive. I tend to cope with humor. This story has nothing to do with any of that.
Friday, December 22, 2006
We’re spending Christmas in Denver
with my family. Even though my parents have been divorced for ten years, we
still all have Christmas together. And when I told my Dad we didn’t think we
could afford the flight this year, he booked the tickets for us., So. We’re
spending Christmas in Denver with my family.
The weather
has been terrible all week, so I get up early to check our flight online to
make sure it hasn’t been delayed or cancelled.
But I can’t
find it. There is no flight at that time. I check the flight number again, and
it just doesn’t exist. I’m looking at the email confirmation, and I can see
that I have the information correct, so I finally call the service hotline for
Southwest. I get an automated response, and enter my flight number. There are
no matches. I try again. No matches. Out of desperation, I try the “just press
zero” trick, and miraculously I am soon talking to a real live person. I
explain my situation, and give her my flight number.
“Um, Ma’am?
That flight doesn’t leave for a month.” I look at my email confirmation again.
And there it is, plain as anything. January 22, 2007.
“Um, yeah,
OK, I see that.” Note to self: when sixty-eight-year-old father offers to buy
ticket home for Christmas, always accept. But next time, get credit card
information and book the flight yourself. I sit, silently holding the phone to
my ear, staring blankly at the screen, waiting for the logical answer to come
to me through divine intervention. I try to will the flight into existence. Or,
more accurately, to will the flight into this month. When that doesn’t work, I
try a different tactic. “Is there anything available for today?” I ask the
woman on the other end of the phone, knowing the answer before I hear it.
“No, ma’am,
all our flights are booked for the week.” Of course they are. It’s three days
before Christmas. So, I call out to Ryan, who is saying something in the other
room about waiting until the last second to pack again. Something about how
we’ll never fit all this in our luggage. He joins me in the office, where I
tell him that luggage is probably not going to be an issue. “My Dad booked our
tickets for January 22. We don’t have tickets for today. We have tickets for a
month from today.”
And he just
laughs. “Looks like we’re staying here then.” He has always fantasized about a
quiet Christmas in our very own home. The look in his eyes tells me he thinks
this is his chance. But I’m not up for that. Not this year.
“We can’t
just stay here! We need to get there!” I yell, trying to remain calm. But within moments, I’m crying, and he can
tell we need to find a way. “OK,” he says. “Let me think for a sec. You should
call your Mom though and tell her what’s going on.”
Ad so I do.
And she tells me how heartbroken she is. And that we have to find some way
there. I tell her we’ll try, but I just don’t see how it’s possible.
“Hey!” Ryan
says from the living room a few minutes later. ”We have a car. We could drive.”
“To Denver?
In Elyse Keaton? Would she make it?”
“Sure she
would! It’ll be fun! Call your Mom and tell her we’re driving.”
And I do.
And she is terrified. Not so terrified that she doesn’t want us to do it, but
terrified nonetheless. I call my sister and give her the news. She laughs at me
from Canton, Ohio where she is celebrating Hanukah with her in-laws.
“Seriously, though. Be careful.” I tell her we’ll be careful, and that I’ll see
her in a few days.
Minutes
later, the phone rings. It’s Michele. “Hey. Can we have a ride?”
“To Denver?
From Canton?”
“Yeah. The
snow is so bad here all the airports are closed. There are no flights in or out
of Canton. Or Cleveland. Or Detroit. Or Columbus. And they don’t think they can
get us out of here for at least a week. You drive to Canton, and then leave
your car and we’ll rent one. No offense.”
“None taken.
We’ll come get you. It’ll be a road trip! It’ll be fun!”
Saturday, December 24, 2006
I’m not sure what part of this we
thought would be fun. It hasn’t been un-fun. Just not fun. It’s mostly just
exhausting. And cramped. We had time for a ninety-minute nap in Canton before
heading back out on the road. And now
it’s the wee small hours of Christmas Eve morning and I’m wondering if I will
ever get out of this back seat. I’m drifting in and out of sleep like I have
been for the past twenty hours when I hear a loud bang.
“Shit” Eric
says. He’s driving.
“That’s not
something you want to hear from the driver,” Ryan answers flatly from his
shotgun seat.
“I hit
something.” And then, everything in the car powers down completely. Eric turns
the steering wheel hard and manages to get us to the side of the road. The rental car rolls to
a stop. Ryan and Eric get out of the car all manly-like and come back with the
report.
“Yeah.
Something tore through the gas tank. That’s why we stopped. We’re out of gas.
It’s all over the road.” We all look at each other stunned. There are twenty
years of Ohio University education in this car (not to mention my two from NYU)
and we all come up with the same answer. We call our Mommy. It’s 3 AM, but she
answers. “Hi,” I say, trying to be casual.
“Well, hi.
What’s going on.”
“Um, we hit
something. Well, Eric hit something. I mean, he didn’t mean to. But it tore
through the gas tank and we’re stuck on the side of the road. We’re all OK. But
we’re stuck.”
“What do you
mean he hit something? What did he hit?”
“We don’t
know. There was something in the middle of the road.”
“Well what
did they say?”
“What did
who say?”
“Whoever you
called to come help you!”
“We called
you.”
“Melinda
Kay. Hang up the phone and call Hertz. They will send someone to help you.”
“Oh. We
didn’t think of that. Sure. We’ll call them. Do you want us to let you go back
to sleep? Or should we call you back.”
“My two
daughters and two sons-in-law are stranded on the side of the highway in the
middle of nowhere on Christmas Eve. I won’t be sleeping. Please call me back.”
I tell Eric
he should call Hertz, which he does. He explains what happened the best he can,
and explains our location the best he can. The Hertz agent tells us she’ll send
a tow truck right away, but that she doesn’t know how quickly she can get
someone to us, seeing as it’s Christmas Eve, and we’re in the middle of
nowhere. This is not comforting.
It’s dark.
And it’s cold. And I’m tired. And I don’t know where we are. “What if we freeze
to death?” I wonder out loud. “That happens. People break down on the side of
the road and freeze to death.”
“We’re not
going to freeze to death,” Ryan tries to assure me.
“Wait. She’s
right,“ Michele agrees, probably not helping things. “We could totally freeze
to death. That does happen. What if it takes them hours or they can’t find us
and we freeze to death?”
I’ve just
decided that we are, in fact, going to freeze to death- I start glancing around
me, looking for a piece of paper on which I can leave my last thoughts- when the red lights from the fire truck swirl
through the car. So I guess we‘ll be fine then.
The fireman
asks us what happened while his friends take a look at the gas on the road.
Since the only information we have is “we hit something,”,” and they know a tow
truck is on the way eventually and the fuel on the road has been investigated,
the fire truck leaves our accident scene in a very anticlimactic way. No lights
or anything.
We have just
enough time to remember that we have snacks in the back when the Sheriff pulls
up. We offer him a rice crispy treat. He doesn‘t take it, but asks if we need
anything. We tell him it’s cold, and he lets us into the back seat of his car.
And I’m sitting there with my little sister, and we’re warming up, and we’re
eating rice crispy treats at 3 AM on Christmas Eve in the back of the Sheriff‘s
car. And we start to laugh. And then we start to laugh harder. And soon I’m
laughing so hard that I can’t breathe and tears are streaming down my face and
I’m not even making any sound. Just completely seized up in the joy of how
ridiculous it all is. Ryan knocks on the car window. “What is so funny?” his
muffled voice yells through the glass. “You’re shaking the whole car!” which
only breaks us up more. I can’t answer him, but I gesture out with both palms
up, taking in everything around me in an effort to say.” This! This is what’s
so funny!”
A few
moments pass, and the fire truck returns. The Sheriff lets us out of the car.
“The firemen found what you hit,” he says. They’ve brought it to us, like a
Christmas present. They’ve tossed it in the snow on the side of the road. It’s
a large hunk of metal wrapped in black rubber.
“How does
that even happen? What is it?” I ask the fireman who threw it there. He
explains that it’s a metal mud flap from the back of a semi. And I know in that
moment that when I recall this story in years to come, the mud flap will be
decorated in my mind with the white silhouettes of two women sitting back-to-back,
even though this is just a plain old ordinary black mud flap.
“It looks
like a tire blew, and tore this off with it. So it was all just sitting there
tangled in the road, waiting for you to hit it. And that’s what tore through
your gas tank.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Do you want a rice crispy treat?“ He doesn’t. And the laughing starts all over
again.
An hour
later, we are sitting in the cab of Manuel’s truck. “Your name is Manuel?” I
asked when we first boarded the vehicle, to make sure I had heard him correctly.
And then I offered him a rice crispy treat, which he declined. And I have been
sitting quietly ever since, as Ryan, Michele and Eric tell Manuel our tale.
Ryan and Michele’s version is a comedy, while Eric’s is an
I-hope-I-don’t-have-to-pay-for-this tragedy. And in a break in the
conversation, I burst into song. To the tune of “Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel,” I
serenade my tow truck audience.
REJOOOOOOOOICE!
REJOOOOOOOOICE! It’s Ma-a-a-nu-el! To save us from our Christmas travel hell!
Michele stares at me in silent shock.
And then, finally, “have you been just sitting there working on that?”
“Yes.” She
hands me another rice crispy treat, and we all go on as if I hadn’t just
performed the greatest One-woman-show-about-hitting-a-metal-mudflap-on-Christmas-Eve
in the history of tow trucks.
We arrive at
the Hertz office at the Denver airport to trade in our car, and we are greeted
by two employees who have obviously been alerted regarding our accident. “Are
you alright?” they say, rushing from behind the desk. “We’ve been waiting! Do
you need water?” We assure them we are fine, and ask if either of them would
like a rice crispy treat. Alan, our new friend behind the desk, says that he
would love one. “Really?” I say. And I run to the car to get him one. When I
return, Eric is filling out some paperwork. He is telling the whole story-
about the loud bang, and the gas tank, how the firemen brought us the mud flap-
to Jennifer, who appears to be paying attention. Technically, she had to return
the first car, and rent us a second. So Jennifer starts with the questions that
come up on the screen.
“Is the gas
tank full?”
“No. It’s
not,” Eric answers.
“Oh. How
full would you say it is?”
I can see
that Eric is getting tired and frustrated and worried that he’s going to have
to pay for something else, so I step in. “Um, the gas tank is empty. But I tell
you what. We’ll pay for as much gas as you can get to stay in the tank. The one
that tore open. When we hit the mud flap.”
“Oh. Right.”
And we get
in our new rental car, and we drive those last few miles over the river and
through the woods.
