You might be thinking that you would’ve loved to have seen Brandon dressed like that, but here’s the thing… I had to pull something out of that same donation bin, and all I could find to fit me was a two-piece pajama set of knit cotton shorts with a matching top. Now you might be thinking, well that doesn’t sound too bad. But here’s the other thing. They had leprechauns, rainbows, and giant pots of gold all over them. I looked like a walking St. Patrick’s Day billboard.
The only alternative to these clothes were the sweaty, swampy clothes we’d been wearing, which we had tried to wash out in the church restroom sink. But there must’ve been some swamp magic in that mud, and not the wishes-come-true kind of magic. The more we scrubbed our clothes, the more we realized they’d been transformed, never to return to their original color, texture, or smell.
So, after our church-restroom-sink showers, Mimi encouraged us by saying, “beggars can’t be choosers” when she saw us in our new-old, donation-bin outfits.
I knew she was right, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
And now that I’m waking up in this outfit, all I can think about is all my clothes in the trunk of Gram’s car and how I can’t wait until we get them back.
Love,
Me
Dear Me,
The only thing we’d had to eat since leaving Sunny Sandy Shores was the tin of extra chocolate chip cookies I had brought on the trip.
Back at the car, when we’d packed our suitcases full of Mimi’s Bibles, I shoved the cookie tin into my suitcase.
(In retrospect, I realize I should’ve shoved some clean clothes in that suitcase too, but in the madness of the moment, my decision-making had been impaired.)
Once we’d gotten inside the church, and I pulled that cookie tin out of my suitcase and showed Gram, Mimi, and Brandon, their elation was beyond measure. In our frenzy of excitement, we devoured every last cookie.
We probably should’ve rationed them, saving a few for later; but we were all so hungry and relieved to finally be inside the church, and those cookies were the perfect way to celebrate. The best part was that while we ate them, it was as if each chocolate chip melted away more and more of the fatigue and frustration that had followed us down the road to Glory Bound Baptist.
And even better than that, the cookies helped Gram forgive Mimi once and for all.
By the time the tin was empty, we had laughed ourselves to tears as we relived the turtle in the middle of the road, Gram’s Mustang skidding in a circle completely out of control, the four of us clambering into the car after seeing that alligator, and the mud spraying up into mine and Brando’s faces.
When we went to bed, I wasn’t sure if my stomach hurt more from laughing or from eating way too many cookies.
This morning when Gram found me in the sanctuary and brought me back to the room where she and Mimi had slept, I was super surprised, but thrilled, to see a feast laid out on the floor—granola bars, little boxes of raisins, mini bags of corn chips, and small packages of peanut butter crackers. The spread of packaged snack foods lay on top of a flower-print, plastic tablecloth.
“Look at what Brandy found in the church food pantry box!” Mimi exclaimed.
“Yeah, it was right there in the back of the room against the wall,” Brandon said. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it last night.”
“Talk about saving the day!” Gram added.
Now, don’t get me wrong, my mouth watered at the sight of all that food, but are you thinking what I’m thinking? Saving the day? I don’t see how waking up next to a food pantry box actually qualifies as “saving the day,” but whatever.
“And thank heavens for my plastic purse tablecloth!” Mimi boasted.
She slowly swept her spindly puppet arm in front of her like she was showing the grand prize on a game show.
Again, I’m sure you’re thinking what I’m thinking.
“Plastic purse tablecloth?”
Those three words don’t typically go together.
But when I asked Mimi why she carried a tablecloth in her purse, she looked at me as if that was the most ludicrous question in the world.
“Honey, you just never know how clean a restaurant’s tables really are, and there’s absolutely no reason to take chances like that, so I always carry a tablecloth folded up in my purse.”
Then Mimi reached for my hand and pumped hand sanitizer into my palm from a larger-than-purse-sized bottle of aloe-infused, vanilla-scented sanitizer.
As I smeared it all over my hands, until they felt moisturized and smelled good enough to eat, Gram told Brandon to go ahead and let me in on the best news of all.
That’s when Brandon told me that while he was in the men’s restroom just after he woke up, he heard a phone ringing. He ran down the hall toward the ringing sound and found a tiny church office at the end of the hall with one of those old, landline telephones. He had already called home, and his brother, Duncan, was on his way to come and rescue us from Glory Bound Baptist.
“Can you believe Brandy arranged all that for us?!” Mimi said excitedly.
Actually, what I couldn’t believe was that after not lifting a finger, or maybe I should say “not lifting a wrist” all day yesterday, Brandon had woken up in a room full of food and then just happened to hear a phone ringing, and suddenly he was a bigger hero than Superman?
What was up with that?
I don’t remember anyone saying anything all that complimentary when I had the idea of pushing Gram’s car out of the ditch. I mean, okay, it hadn’t actually worked, but at least I had made an attempt.
And who had figured out how to bring Mimi’s Bibles along with us so that she’d agree to walk for help?
I know carrying the Bibles in the suitcases made Gram mad, but what else were we going to do?
And let’s not forget that we’d still be sitting on the steps of Glory Bound Baptist if it weren’t for me climbing in that window.
I know you’re probably thinking that I really sound like an ungrateful, resentful whiner and that I should just be happy that we have something to eat and that we’re about to be rescued. And you know what? You’re right, which is why I feel like a great big fat brat for being so disgruntled about everything. But knowing all that is not making me feel any less disgruntled.
So, with our soft, sweet-smelling sanitized hands and pristine plastic tablecloth all laid out, the four of us sat down on the floor to enjoy our indoor picnic. But after all of Brando’s big news, even though I was starving, I wasn’t feeling all that picnicky.
(And yes, I know picknicky is not an actual word, but it really should be.)
Love,
Me
Dear Me,
Can you believe that after all I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours, when I finally got ahold of Mom, she actually lectured me?
She is so out of control!
After two packages of peanut butter crackers, one granola bar, three boxes of raisins, five mini bags of corn chips, and eleven Dixie cups of water from the hallway drinking fountain, Gram told Brandon to show me where the phone was so that I could call Mom to check in with her.
I thought since she wouldn’t recognize the church’s phone number, she wouldn’t answer. So I hadn’t really given much thought to what I’d say to Mom other than to leave a short message saying I’d call her again later when our cell phones had service.
But Mom surprised me by answering her phone.
If Mom had any idea what had been going on since we’d left Gram’s condo, she’d probably flip out, scold Gram, and send a moving van down to Sunny Sandy Shores so that it would be waiting for us when we returned from the road trip.
So, because I wanted no part of Mom’s OSSS Mission, I gave a lot of short, vague answers to all her questions.
But, since I wasn’t saying much, that gave M
om the opening she needed to launch into questions about Gram’s pills.
“So, you’re sure she’s taking them, Sam?”
“Yes, Mom,” I answered as if I was reciting a memorized line from the script of a play called Loving Mother, Obedient Daughter.
Mom must’ve detected annoyance in my portrayal of my role as Obedient Daughter, because she continued, “Samantha, you don’t seem to get it. That medication is critical. She needs to take it!”
I, of course, snapped back and said, “I get it, Mom!”
“Did you actually see her take the pills?”
I couldn’t believe Mom was being this much of a control freak.
The thing was, I hadn’t really seen Gram take her medication.
Honestly, in the flurry of activity back at the condo making ornaments and then cookies and in the traumatic events of the first day of the road trip, I’d kind of forgotten all about Gram’s medication. But just by chance, when Gram, Mimi, and I were getting ready for bed in the church restroom, I happened to see Gram’s pill container. The sections for the three days since Mom left were empty, so she was obviously taking her pills every day.
I knew I wasn’t going to get away with vague, short answers about this, so I tried to explain, “No, I didn’t actually see her take the pills, but—”
“Then how do you know she did?!”
“I’m trying to tell you, Mom!”
So, I explained about the empty sections of the pill container.
Surprisingly, that seemed to satisfy her for the moment, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t go into this whole long thing about how it would really be better if I actually saw Gram take them, just to be sure, and blah, blah, blah.
I just let Mom talk.
Then she stopped herself, almost mid-rant, to ask, “And why in the world are you calling from a number that comes up Glory Bound Baptist Church? You’re lucky I even answered the call.”
At that moment, I wasn’t considering myself very lucky, for lots of reasons. But I wasn’t going to say something snarky and risk an even longer lecture, so I just said, “It’s kind of a long story.”
Mom of course wanted to know what kind of a long story.
But here’s the thing, all kidding and sarcasm aside, deep down I knew that what had happened in just this short time on the road trip would’ve been more than enough evidence for Mom to stamp ACCOMPLISHED on the mission of Operation Sunny Sandy Shores.
Actually, even one of the things that had happened so far was probably enough for Mom to leave her Make It, Take It emergency immediately and rent a big, old moving truck. Forget about hiring someone to drive that moving van down to Sunny Sandy Shores, she’d drive it herself straight to the steps of the Glory Bound Baptist Church and pick up Gram, Mimi, Brandon, and me.
She’d tell Gram that she had no choice but to move back up north to that nice little condo eight and a half minutes from our house.
Not only would it mean the end of Gram’s life at Sunny Sandy Shores, but it would also mean the end of our road trip. Gram wouldn’t get to sing karaoke; Mimi wouldn’t get to deliver those Bibles that we’d just schlepped over the blistering, hot blacktop; and Brandon and I would both go home.
So, if I wanted to, I could’ve ended it all right then and there, but for some reason I didn’t. And even if I stayed after school for a week to work with Mrs. Brackman learning extra-credit vocab words, I still wouldn’t have the words to articulate why, because I didn’t really know why. (Maybe I really was a glutton for punishment.)
“Well…it’s just that Gram and Mimi wanted to drive the back roads…you know, to see the scenery…and so, you know, we’re in kind of a rural area, so the cell service isn’t all that great…”
“Rural?” Mom asked. “How rural? Is it safe where you are?”
I was working hard to answer Mom truthfully, just not specifically or completely, so I thought about our night at Glory Bound Baptist.
Had we been safe?
I had slept in a church sanctuary, for goodness’ sake.
How much safer could you get?
And besides that, Brandon’s brother was on his way to rescue us.
So, yes.
Yes!
We were safe, I assured Mom.
And then thankfully I heard someone talking to Mom in the background, and Mom told the person she’d be there in a minute.
But before she ended the call, she told me she thought I sounded as if something wasn’t quite right.
I assured her again that everything was fine, and I hung up.
I stood there with my hand on the receiver and a nagging little worry burrowing like a worm in my mind.
Not telling Mom the whole truth about everything that had happened so far meant that now, if things didn’t turn out all right on this trip, I would be a little more liable.
You might be wondering why I put myself in this conundrum.
And actually, at this moment, I’m wondering the Exact. Same. Thing.
Love,
Me
Dear Me,
I can’t help but think that if leprechauns really were magical, things would be a lot better for me right now, actually they’d be better for all of us.
I wouldn’t wish for anything extravagant for myself, just some clothes that weren’t so embarrassing to walk around in.
But for Gram, I’d wish for something super extravagant—a new Mustang is really what she needs. Actually, it’s what we all need, because when Brandon’s nineteen-year-old brother Duncan pulled into the church parking lot, though he was there to rescue us, and Mimi must have said at least a dozen, “Praise the Lords!” it wasn’t all sunshine and roses.
First things first.
The preliminary detail I need to tell you is that Duncan was so cute. I mean really really cute! Easily a hundred times cuter than Brandon, which meant I felt about a thousand times more embarrassed standing around in my unmagical pj’s. I know this detail doesn’t really have an impact on the outcome of events for us, but it is certainly important in understanding my state of mind at this point in the story.
When Duncan saw Brandon in his pink plaid Bermudas and yellow daisy shirt, he said, “Nice outfit, dude!”
But then, when Duncan got a glimpse of me, he raised his eyebrows at Brandon and smirked.
Talk about humiliating!
Next came the bad news.
Duncan told us he’d spotted Gram’s car in the ditch on his way to come get us, which on the surface seems like good news, but it wasn’t.
Turns out if we would’ve walked down the road in the direction we had been headed in the car, we would’ve found a little town less than a mile from where we’d gone in the ditch. Knowing that we could’ve avoided our long trek to Glory Bound Baptist, circumventing our church sleepover and everything that went along with it, though it sounds like the bad news, is nothing compared to the actual bad news.
The actual bad news is that when Duncan saw Gram’s car, he went back to the town and found someone with a tow truck. He planned to get the car pulled out of the ditch for us and leave it on the side of the road. Then come pick us up at the church, take us back to the car, and we could get right back to our road trip.
But no such luck.
The tow truck guy, who was also the town mechanic, had taken one look at the car and said the front axle was so bent that the car was undrivable.
“Undrivable?!” Gram shrieked when Duncan explained what happened.
“That’s what he told me,” Duncan said. “But the guy’s pretty sure he can fix it, so he towed it to town, and he’s working on it right now.”
“Thank heavens!” Mimi exclaimed.
So, we hoisted our suitcases into the bed of Duncan’s pickup truck, and Brandon and I climbed in there too. Gram, Mimi, and Duncan piled into the cab, but
before we pulled away, Mimi told Duncan to wait. She dug around in her purse, took out her wallet, hurried back up the steps of Glory Bound Baptist Church, and shoved some money into the mail slot in the bottom of the church’s front door.
“Can’t leave without repaying the Lord and the Glory Bound Baptist congregation for all our bountiful blessings,” Mimi said, rushing back toward the pickup. “Every last thing was nothing but an answer to prayer.”
This wasn’t exactly the way I would’ve described things, but just as Gram had lost the argument with Mimi about bringing the Bibles with us, I knew there would be no reason for anyone to disagree with Mimi about all the bountiful answers to prayer we’d all enjoyed.
Then we headed straight toward Tow Tow Tow Your Car, the shop where the tow truck driver/mechanic/bearer of bad news was working on Gram’s Mustang.
When we got there, and Gram saw her car with its front end jacked up and the mechanic underneath it with a light working on it, I thought she might cry, but somehow, she managed to hold it together.
When the mechanic heard us, he rolled out from under the car and assured Gram that he’d have the car fixed in another hour or so.
Of course, that news warranted a few more “Praise the Lords!” from Mimi.
And you might be thinking that I don’t sound all that grateful when we had, in fact, been rescued and Gram’s car was obviously going to be drivable once again. But that’s because there’s more to the story.
Are you ready for the worst news?
When I asked if we could open the trunk of the Mustang to get our clothes out so that we could change into our own clothes again, Duncan and the mechanic had strange looks on their faces.
“Not sure what you mean, ma’am. Only clothes in the car were the rummage clothes,” the mechanic said.
“No, no,” I said. “Not the clothes in the back seat. The clothes in the trunk. Our clothes.”
“The clothes in the trunk were with the boxes marked ‘church charity,’” Duncan said. “I thought all the clothes were old clothes.”
“Well, I beg your pardon,” Gram said with a persnickety tone. “Those are our clothes. The ones we packed for the trip.”
When I Hit the Road Page 8
