At our house, nothing ever goes quite as planned.
Take the halfway mark visit that the four grandchildren’s parents promised before the quartet came to stay for a month.
The mold issues in their home took a lot more time and energy than their mom had anticipated, so instead of her coming, my son planned to end his consultation in Houston with a three-day layover in Arkansas.
“I’ll be at the airport at 8:30 p.m. Thursday,” he wrote in a text.
Right. I forwarded the text to my daughter who lives 20 minutes from the airport.
“I’ll pick him up and meet you half way,” she said, ensuring she would have time to visit with him before she left on a trip of her own.
I debated leaving work early so I could have the ride home to visit with my son or to stay put and use the after-work hours to prepare for his arrival.
Then the thunder clouds gathered. That storm that watered your grass and shook the windows last week trailed its noisy, wet path over Houston and Little Rock as well.
“The flight is delayed,” the expected guest called to say. “I will be there at 10:30, 11 p.m.”
“I’ll pick him up, y’all can meet up with him tomorrow,” my daughter said.
He waited at the airport – until the airline canceled the flight completely.
“I wish they had decided this three hours ago,” he grumbled.
My son snagged a room at the hotel near the airport and worked on finding another flight while the rest of us went to bed.
Early in the morning, the rain still dripped as I checked my email, “I’m flying to Monroe so I can get there sooner and dad doesn’t have to drive as long. I am almost regretting this because it means that I won’t get to see my sister or go to Community Bakery,” our delayed traveler wrote.
“Hey, hey!” I nudged my still sleeping husband. “He is going to Monroe. You could take that side-trip to the Duck Commander while you are there.” It had been on our list of possible things to do to during the grandchildren’s visit.
I scurried around preparing for work. He slipped into his command post at the computer and researched directions to the airport and Duck Commander Store in West Monroe.
I kid you not, less than two hours later, my son called to say that his flight to Monroe had been cancelled and he had re-booked to Little Rock. “I can’t reach Dad, can you call him?”
“I’ll try but he left for Monroe a while back.”
I did manage to make contact.
He was quite happy to tell me everything they had done to get to the airport on time, “We are almost there. We got up, ate …”
“Stop. Wait. Just listen. He is NOT going to Monroe. He is going to Little Rock. He’ll be there this afternoon.”
“We are almost there,” he protested.
“He is not coming there.”
We said good-bye and in our separate ways thought about our quandary.
He called back an hour later, “We just left the Duck Commander store. I figured, ‘we are this close’, we are going. What do you think about us going to that restaurant?” I knew which one he meant and knew it would take a couple hours to fit it into his travel time.”
“You won’t get to Little Rock on time.”
They grabbed a lunch to go and headed from Monroe to Little Rock.
I kept pecking away at the computer at work, ticking off the hours at my job.
About the time they neared El Dorado, my son called with his arrival time. His sister would meet him up at the airport. They would see each other after all.
They had a little reunion at the bakery in Little Rock while I went home, feeling sorry for myself that I didn’t get to have a treat and a visit at the coffee shop. They ate. They drove. I went home, ate an ice cream cone and took a much-needed nap.
By the time they pulled in that evening, I felt well rested and ready to visit late into the night.
The crew that went to Monroe and back, then to Little Rock and back all in one day, dragged into the house and slumped onto the couches. It had been a long day going to the big cities with little show for all that time other than a duck call and their dad sitting in the same room with them swapping stories halfway through their unexpected summer visit to Arkansas.
(Joan Hershberger is a staff writer at the News-Times and author of “Twenty Gallons of Milk and Other Columns from the El Dorado News-Times.” Email her at joanh@everybody.org)