The parents decided they would be driving from southeast Texas to Illinois to take my cousin home. Here is where the fun begins. My cousin and my husband were both over six feet tall. My mother weighed in at around 200 pounds and my step-father was about the same. I was a slight person, 5'2" short and about 120 pounds. Then comes the children: my brother Michael, 11, and about the same size as me, and handicapped, my three-year-old daughter and my six-month-old son. Both of those children were in car seats. Here's the kicker: We were in a sedan! Not a van, not a truck with a camper, a sedan.
We, my cousin, husband, and mother stayed up until midnight because that is when my step-father got off work. He got home and we packed up the car with all our stuff. Then, instead of sleeping at the trailer and getting a good start in the morning, we left at 12:30 in the morning. We drove about an hour to the north side of Houston and stopped at a rest area--TO SLEEP!!
Here I was, jammed between 2 men with 36" long legs and torsos to match, with a 3 year old girl across my chest in the middle of the back seat of that sedan. I had about a third of the space needed to be comfortable, or even a third of the space needed for my body to fit. I was contorted so much that I thought I was unlikely to recover.
We stayed at that rest area, three men snoring away, for about two hours and then got back on the road around 4:00 in the morning, headed north toward Illinois to drop off my cousin. Several times during the trip I asked, no I BEGGED to be allowed to drive just so I would have a little room for me, for just a little while. After all, my step-father drove, my mother took the co-pilot seat, and my little brother sat between them. I sat in the back, between the cousins and a car seat with a baby in it, and the three year old on my lap. I was only able to breathe when we stopped to eat. I insisted on getting out of the car and not sitting in the middle at drive-through windows.
We made it to Illinois, to Grandma's house, in about two days. Not only did my step father insist upon driving, he insisted on doing it at 55 mph when the speed limit was 65. Way to make people feel controlled, there, Mike!
I was relieved to unbend my knees and was thrilled to realize that they would actually unbend. We unpacked the cousin and left him there. We stayed at Grandma's house a couple days. Did I mention I was a full grown woman with a husband, children and a military career? I sat down at the table where all the women sat. I earned the spot. I managed to grow up in this family and survive. My mother told me to get out of the chair and let my aunt sit down. I swallowed and took a deep breath and attempted to assert myself as a woman (after all, I was 22 then). I told my mother that if my aunt wanted to sit down all she had to do was ask and I would get up and gladly give her my seat. I thought my mother was going to come unhinged. She had been so used to chasing me away as a teenager that she seemed to have forgotten along the way that I had managed to grow up! She just about slapped me across the face and both her and the Matriarch, my grandmother, shouted at me as though I had been rude. I stood up from the chair and left the kitchen. I heard my aunt defending me but I was now sent away and would not give them the satisfaction of being forgiven. I sat in the living room with my children the rest of the day.
Then we left Grandma's house and headed West to Iowa to visit with my husband's family. His father was a wonderful man but something about his step-mother was bothersome to me. I realized what it was when I walked into their home in March in Iowa with my baby boy in a thick fleece hoodie, a thicker denim vest, lined with that cool fuzzy sheep skin stuff, and wrapped in a blanket, his older sister bundled up in jeans and a purple and red hooded winter coat. I got an insulting earful about how I took better care of the daughter than the son. That boy was warm! His hands were warm, his nose was warm, he was warm. I cried. Darn hormones!!! Reset already!
We left Iowa the next day, heading back toward Texas. The family decided to give us all a treat and stopped at a motel. My husband thought it would be great to rend a jacuzzi room with a king-size bed complete with satin sheets. We enjoyed the jacuzzi after being stressed and cramped up for four days. Then, still damp, we went to bed. I got hot in the sheets, kicked them off, then got cold, and covered back up. I caught a terrible cold from getting hot and cold and hot and cold. The rest of the trip, another entire day, was miserable.
Then, we FINALLY got back to Texas. That was the worse trip I've ever taken, even compared to sitting in the back of a pickup truck riding from Colorado to Illinois in November for Thanksgiving!
And the worst part was: I could have just told them "NO".
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