Happy Thanksgiving, friends! As it happens, today falls on another landmark date in our family’s history. I promised you a story today, so without further ado:
On Thursday, November 25, 2004, David and I squeezed the last of our earthly belongings into our minivan, buckled our boys, aged 3, 2, and 8 months, into their car seats, and got on the highway headed east. We planned to stop in Tuscon, Arizona that evening. Our route was meticulously mapped out on paper — imagine that!
Around noon, we stopped for lunch near Blythe, California. Since it was Thanksgiving Day, and we were in the middle of the desert, we were excited to see a Denny’s near the highway. Denny’s, as their signs used to say, was “ALWAYS OPEN.” We settled in to a booth by the windows. The older boys and I had breakfast plates because breakfast is the best meal at any time. The baby had some bits off mom and dad’s plates. David ordered a turkey dinner plate. It was Thanksgiving, as you remember.
After lunch, the youngest needed to be changed. While I hustled the older two through the restaurant bathroom, David took him out to the van to change his diaper. We were hoping the kids would settle in for a bit of a nap in the afternoon, so we took every measure necessary to ensure an uninterrupted cruise for the next few hours.
As luck, the will of God, the routine of parenting tiny children, and deep irony would have it, ten miles down the road, the baby needed to be changed again. We stopped in a roadside pull-off area and made him comfortable again.
That night, road-weary but feeling optimistic after a successful first day on the road, we pulled into our La Quinta Inn in Tuscon, Arizona. As we did with any major trip, David and I split the labor after we checked in. It was my job to hustle the kids up to the room and start getting everyone settled in. David ran back and forth from the van, pulling in whatever luggage we needed for the night.
The two older boys were running around the room stretching their legs while I laid Andrew out on one of the beds for some supervised crawling (I was never a big fan of the hotel carpeting). David opened the door, carrying two bags. His face was drawn and white as a sheet. As he collapsed sideways onto the nearest bed, he mumbled, “I might have just lost our house.”
From the way that he looked, I honestly thought he was having a heart attack.
“Our house” was technically not yet ours. It was a house we had scouted out on the internet, and with the help of friends and our trustworthy realtor, we planned to buy it at a closing that was scheduled for the day we drove into Charlotte. Before we left California, we had secured a cashier’s check in the amount that was needed for the closing. That cashier’s check was in David’s portfolio, which was in David’s briefcase.
As David had just discovered in unloading the van, his briefcase was on the ground in the parking lot of the Denny’s in Blythe, California.*
Because our van was so loaded, we had the three car seats across the middle row. That means the only “changing area” available after lunch was the floor right behind the driver’s seat. When we packed up that morning, the space behind the driver’s seat was where the driver’s stuff sat. The driver was David, and his stuff was his briefcase. So when he needed a spot to change the baby, he pulled the briefcase out and set it on the ground. As David was finishing up Dad duty, the other boys and I came out of the restaurant, chaos ensued as it usually did, we buckled them all in, and drove away.
If only we’d noticed at that one stop ten miles down the road, many hours ago…
What to do? In that particular moment, we did what we usually do as a couple. David goes worst-case scenario (“It was probably stolen hours ago”), and I look around in a panic for something to do. Fortunately, David saves everything, especially paper, and he still had the receipt from lunch. As he brought up the rest of the bags and the pack-n-play for Andrew, I sat down on the bed and called Denny’s. The waitress who picked up the phone transferred me to the shift manager. The shift manager reported that yes, someone had turned in the briefcase after discovering it in the parking lot. Unfortunately, the store manager had put it in the safe for the night, and he wouldn’t be back in until the following morning.
OK. So we knew the bag was still there. Was the person who found it benevolent or not? Were the checks still inside it? What if it’s gone? Should we just keep going? All our possessions, plus our other car, were on a truck with movers, expecting to get paid a week later when they arrived in Charlotte. We needed to be there to greet them. But we also needed somewhere for the movers to unload, like, for example, a house. A house that we were due to close on in a few days. What to think, what to think.
David decided that instead of trying to work around FedEx or anything like that, he needed to get back to Blythe California and lay eyes on everything as soon as possible. However, given the fact that we had just wrapped up an exhausting week of preparing to move, saying goodbye to our friends, and shutting down our condo in SoCal, plus one day of driving with three tiny children, I told him he should try to rest. The manager wasn’t due in to the store until 9 am, anyway.
He made a valiant effort at sleeping, but he was pulling out of the parking lot before 4 am. As for me, I went back to sleep and waited for the kids to wake up.
After an emotional drive through the Arizona desert, David arrived at Denny’s and awaited the manager’s arrival. Meanwhile, back at the hotel in Tuscon, I turned on the Black Friday Tom and Jerry marathon for the boys and called all our future hotels. Even if we made good time that afternoon, we wouldn’t be making it to our carefully planned stops.
The boys and I headed to the lobby for breakfast. I was going as slowly as possible because hanging out in a hotel room with three little boys for hours is not a very good time. We went back to the room and did baths. We watched more Tom and Jerry. Then the phone rang, and David gave me the report: “everything is here!”
When the manager had arrived that morning, David was already halfway through his breakfast. The waitress directed the manager to his spot at the counter, and he asked to see David’s ID. This was already a good sign -- they knew that they shouldn’t give the bag out to just anyone.
As it turned out, the “safe” was the trunk of the manager’s car. He had taken the bag home with him the night before. The person who’d come across it in the parking lot was his wife, who was working the prior afternoon. She also approached David and told him “this isn’t a real good part of town to leave things.” We knew this.
David wrapped up his breakfast, left an extremely generous tip, and thanked them again as he walked out the door to head back across the desert to Tucson. At the end of the journey was his little family, sitting in the lobby with everything else we owned, because we didn’t get a late check-out.
Shortly after lunch that day, we were back on the road, briefcase in tow, and headed for a reserved room in our new destination of El Paso, Texas. The most beautiful moonrise I’ve ever seen was that night over Las Cruces, New Mexico. But be assured: every time we exited the van and reentered it, we did a “cross-check” on the location of the briefcase. “Show me the briefcase,” he would say, and I would do so. “Show me the checks,” he would say, and I would. Every. Time. Needless to say, we were happy to get the whole thing into the right hands at the end of the trip.
Now, every November 25th, we take our kids to Denny’s. We tell this same story. And we celebrate living here in our Queen City, the city that greeted us with open arms at the end of a long, wearying journey. It is a meal of remembrance -- not unlike the one shared by those weary Israelites who’d finally arrived in the promised land. Instead of roasted lamb and unleavened bread, we eat Moons Over My Hammy or omelets or waffles. We were never in danger, but there were a few moments when we wondered if we’d have to live in a tent.
*We now know that cashier’s checks can be canceled by calling your bank. We didn’t know this at the time and had visions of a thief just emptying our bank accounts. You should also forget this piece of information for the time being, or nothing else that follows will seem wondrous.
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder – Gilbert K. Chesterton