One Spring Trip

Murray, Ping-Hwei and I went to visit Sarah in Wisconsin the second weekend of March. Talk of the corona virus was just warming up, and we’d planned another trip two weeks later, to visit Rebecca in Iowa and my mother in Missouri. That second trip didn’t happen.

We had a couple funnies on our drive to Wisconsin.

In a gas station, the guy at the counter sold us two sodas for the price of one. He said, “A discount, just because of the times we’re going through.”

At another gas station, I couldn’t find my way out of the bathroom. I kept walking and searching for the door. Finally, Murray, outside, heard my cane banging around, and he opened the door and called, “Kathy?”

At some points in my life, I would have been really mad about all that. Either mad at myself, because I couldn’t do something so simple as get myself out of a bathroom. Or I would have tried like crazy to come up with a way to blame someone else for it.

This time it just made me laugh.

Sarah and Murray went to Alde shopping at 9:00 on Saturday morning, and they said about 40 people were lined up waiting. When the lady opened the door to let them in, she said, “We’re all out of everything.”

I wondered if that might have been a dangerous thing for her to say, but Sarah said people laughed, and it wasn’t crazy in the store.

This was right before shut downs, stay-at-home, early hour shopping for seniors, one-way aisles. Shortages on some supplies had already begun, however.

Sarah finished graduate school this May, so Ping-Hwei took her an early graduation present, a huge stuffed dog with long ears. Murray and I wanted to provide her with a special gift for her accomplishment, too, so we brought her two 12-packs of toilet paper. We are so proud of her.

I realized this would be the last time I’d see Sarah’s apartment, which made me a little sad.

It’s probably for the best. For at least the second time, I spilled coffee on Sarah’s carpet, and she and Murray worked hard to clean up the stain. I’ll probably owe for damages to her place when they inspect it when she leaves this summer.

We’ve stayed at the same hotel several times, and Murray chats a lot with the people at the front desk. When we came in Saturday evening, Murray turned to them and said, “We’re really exhausted. In about twenty minutes, could you send someone up to tuck us in?” they laughed and said sure.

We like to visit the church Sarah attends when we’re in Wisconsin, but by Sunday, most churches had switched to online services.

Caleb called to ask what we were doing Sunday morning, and I said we were listening to our Lakewood, Ohio church in Wisconsin. He said he was planning to listen to his online too.

Ping-Hwei likes to laugh and say Sarah kicks us out so she can do her homework. This weekend, she had a really hard project to work on, so she said, “I’m going to need to kick you out before dinner tonight, so I can focus.” Ping-Hwei was delighted.

One of the things we liked best about the hotel we stayed in there was free breakfast. They usually have a nice, small buffet. By the day we left, they were no longer serving the buffet. They offered to fix us a box breakfast of whatever we wanted and bring it out to us from the kitchen. We’ll miss that hotel.

It was kind of a strange trip, but I’m glad we were able to go before things shut down.