Another Day in the Country
What it is and what it isn’t
© Another Day in the Country
I’ve just spent a week in California for Thanksgiving. What it isn’t is long enough. Seven days go by so fast. What my trip was and what I’d hoped for were very different things at times.
Last year, I went west at Christmas as usual and had to race a crippling snowstorm home in time to get stranded in Ramona. This year, I decided it would be smart to go earlier!
Once I’d made my airline reservations, thinking of heading to California was exciting. It was something to look forward to for several months.
In actuality, flying halfway across the country is taxing. Two of my seven days were consumed by travel, which isn’t all that easy.
For weeks, my daughter texted ideas of things she wanted to do in our week together. I just wanted to get there and arrive on my feet. I wanted to be an easy guest and not a burden added to a household of two 50-year-olds leading very full lives with a relatively new dog that has turned into as much work as a child. I suppose the dog gives them something to cuddle after their real child went off to college in August.
“Your bedroom is all ready,” my daughter phoned.
All this she’s done in anticipation, and I know this meant a lot of work bringing in a mattress from the garage to make a bed on a couch in an office.
I was going to bring English muffins along with Christmas cookies that my sister made. My kids go to work early, and the muffins meant I wouldn’t have to hunt for breakfast in an unfamiliar refrigerator.
The weather in Northern California is similar to Kansas in some ways. We’d been having weather in the 60s, and California’s forecast seemed the same, so I didn’t bring all warm winter clothes. When I got to Sacramento, fog rolled in, and my down vest was not enough. The first night I went to bed with all my clothes on.
I don’t like to be a complaining guest, but with all the moisture in the air I was freezing. My Korean son-in-law is happiest with the thermostat set at 60 in the house. It took me years to be courageous, but now I turn up the heat to 65.
When I’m at home alone in Ramona, I imagine sitting around a table in California playing games We did play games every night once my grandson flew in from Southern California.
The mismatch of airline schedules between West and Midwest, north and south, meant four four-hour round trips to the airport in Sacramento in seven days. Who could anticipate that?
We wanted nostalgia and we got it when we went to St. Helena for the annual lighting of the Christmas tree (which really is a stack of wine barrels). They even had artificial snow flying in the air. Lots of people were downtown in a festive mood. It was idyllic— like pictures you see on Facebook.
What wasn’t on the list of fun things was the dog pooping on the carpet in my room and embarrassing his “momma.”
Dogs are a lot of work in my daughter’s world. This pooch has special dietary needs and eats more carefully prepared fruits and vegetables than her husband.
This is a new world for me to inhabit, one in which dogs have the same privileges as people. Olli is a family member, similar to a furry grandchild who views me with suspicion and barks stranger-danger every time I enter a room.
No amount of explaining to the dog about how my husband and I had built the house where he lives makes any difference. This cutie with big brown eyes sleeps in what for years was my bedroom. My former supremacy as queen of the house has been usurped by a 10-pound spaniel.
During this one week of family togetherness, we vowed to use every hour together.—But Jana does manage a business full time. She didn’t plan on an employe getting sick or the sauna going on the fritz. Our last morning together, we had to go to a restaurant for breakfast without her, but she did manage to get away from the office for an hour to pick out a live Christmas tree, just as she’d planned on her list of “fun things to do with Mom.”
In storybook fashion, we crammed a seven foot-tree into a car and inhaled the sweet fragrance all the way home.
When I think about being with my kids, I imagine spirited conversations in the car. Reality is just the opposite.
Sitting in the backseat is my favorite spot in this family, partly because I can get away without putting on my seatbelt. But it makes conversation in an SUV stilted even if I wear my hearing aids. With the hearing aids on, I hear road noise and the symphonies Richard loves to play on the stereo clear as a bell, but words are up for grabs or just lost in the shuffle.
Because of conflicting airline arrivals, we had Thanksgiving on Friday rather than Thursday, as my grandson was coming in late because of a class scheduled for Wednesday night. Who has classes on Wednesday night? This wasn’t on our list of fun things to do.
My Grandma Ehrhardt would have felt right at home sitting at our Thanksgiving table with mashed potatoes and gravy, creamed peas, and her famous pineapple grape salad. There was cream in every dish, it seemed, just as my German grandmother liked to cook.
“We need to make a stop for forks,” my daughter tells her chauffeur son as we pick her up from work.
I’m thinking, forks? Why would she need them? Maybe she’s planning some treat for her staff. And then I realize she said “pork,” which I never eat but the dog does. Where are those silly hearing aids?
“How you doing?” my daughter asks her son as we head for home.
“Well, I felt bad on Tuesday because I couldn’t come in to Sacramento when Baba came, and now I’m feeling bad that I have to leave a day early.”
“Ah, that’s life,” my daughter says, patting his arm.
Sometimes it’s wine barrels decorated as Christmas trees. Sometimes it’s dog poo on the floor. It’s winning that game of Golf or getting home later than you wanted.
The important part was caring enough to get together on another day in the country.