We do it at night for a few reasons. First, Mian doesn't want to take much time off from work and if we leave after work on Tuesday night, he only has to take off Wednesday and Friday - and up until last year his company gave everyone a half day on Wednesday, too. Second, we've never wanted to spend money on a hotel room along the way unless we really had to because everyone was too sleepy to drive. In the first three years after we were married, I was really scared of the driver falling asleep at the wheel and M and I had a pact that we would either both stay awake all night long or stop for the night. Usually I would try to sleep during the day and he would do the entire 14 to 16 hour drive by himself with me keeping him company or talking or dialing his phone for him (because he uses long overnight trips as opportunities to do Pakistan extended family calling.) Another reason we do it overnight came after the birth of our son - it's just so much easier to drive during the hours he would be sleeping anyway. And our pact about both staying up pretty much ended when the baby was born too.
This year I slept as much as I could the day of arrival, then M drove the first two hours and I took over while everyone else slept through the night. The plan was that I would drive until morning prayers and then M would take over and I would sleep the rest of the way. I wasn't able to sleep as much as I'd wanted though, because I'd procrastinated on getting a special turkey from a Muslim butcher shop. My parents had insisted that Chachoo and Dulhan (my brother- and sister-in-law) should be able to experience all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods, so I'd tried to help them by taking care of the turkey part. As usual, I put it off until the 11th hour and had to spend a bit of my supposed-to-be-sleeping time buying and then speed-defrosting a turkey.
Next, after a three hour nap, M and I went to pick up a rental car. We'd decided that in order to make it down south in one go, we'd need a rental car. Our little Toyota Corolla just wouldn't accomodate Chachoo, Dulhan and the baby in the backseat with enough room to sleep. I'd tried to find a way to rent a minivan but it was a very expensive prospect. We ended up doing priceline.com and getting a "premium" car for $25 a day - which after taxes, fees, insurance and a $10/day extra driver fee turned into $50/day. But this was still by far the cheapest option and I can say with authority now that a Chrysler 300 does allow enough room for two adults and a big-car-seated-baby to sleep fairly comfortably on a 14-16 hour trip.
Our plan worked almost seamlessly except for the little hiccup of leaving the baby locked in the car at at rest stop. I'd finished my driving shift and we'd all gotten out of the car for bathroom & washup runs, and we were all going to come back to the car for morning prayers and then be on our way. We were about 3 hours from our destination, and someone - I won't point fingers except to say that it wasn't me but I wans't entirely blameless either - left the keys on the passenger seat while all the bodies were outside of the car and all the doors automatically locked. We wasted almost an hour at the rest stop waiting for the local police (who wouldn't do anything about it) and then a local locksmith who came and then unlocked the car door (for FREE!) After than I was so juiced up on adrenaline, fear and anger than I found it difficult to sleep.
Wednesday was spent helping set up at my Grandmother's house followed by my family's traditional Thanksgiving Eve dinner of delivery pizza. Thursday was Thanksgiving. It was okay this year - not the best it's ever been. A few of our family & close friends were unable to come this year so it was a little sparse. We're used to having a really big gathering and it's always loud and goes too quickly, but it was quieter this year. Chachoo and Dulhan seemed to enjoy themselves, and I heard them discuss it with family members in the car the next night (during the late-night-driving-international-phone-call-session) and they described it glowingly.
The next day was our usual Friday religious services at Mian's old school mosque. Remember when we tried to branch out last year and it went terribly? This year we knew the imam at the old mosque was different because we'd seen the old imam in the news during that burn-a-quran fiasco and he was listed as the leader of a new mosque, so we thought we'd go back and see if it was any better. It was allright - the speech was not about how terrible Thanksgiving was, so that's a plus. But the women are still siphoned off into a separate but unequal building and instead of a fuzzy TV and crackly audio transmission of the speech from the main building, they'd gotten rid of the TV and the audio was so loud I could barely understand any of it. So that's a minus and it basically evened out, I guess. I'm still in the market for a good mosque near my parent's, is what I'm saying.
Because we're getting old and homebody-ish, we actually starting driving home right after Friday prayers. In our advanced age, it is so important to get home with enough time to decompress before having to start the workweek again. The only other thing on M's wish list was a stop at his favorite place in the whole world. It's surplus (i.e. JUNK) shop on our way home. I made him promise we wouldn't stop for more than 30 minutes and he was done after 20, thank God. And he didn't even buy anything. He just wants to look. He loves that place so much that a few years ago he talked it up enough to convince my grandfather, father, and uncle to go there with him even though it's close to 2 hours away from where they live!
The trip back was successful. Not only did we make good time and have Sunday at home - no babies were locked in the car on the way back! Our definition of successful road trip has really sunk, it seems!
Hope those of you who celebrate it had a happy Thanksgiving! A few pictures:
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| Setting up the tables, chairs, and place settings on my grandparent's driveway. |
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| M and the baby taking a walk before the dinner begins, and Dulhan starting down the line of food choices. |
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| Chachoo also filling his plate. We set the food tables up on the back porch. |
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| Mian showing you his plate full of Thanksgiving food - turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, brocolli casserole, squach casserole, carrot soufle, green beans (and yeast rolls, but those were on the table.) |
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| The dessert table - there are always at least half a dozen dessert options! |
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| The morning of Thanksgiving, we always watch the annual Macy's parade on TV and this year we were greated with bollywood style dancing - a perfect parable of merging my two lives together this year with Chachoo and Dulhan tagging along for Thanksgiving, I thought. |
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| Junk or heaven, depending on who you ask... |
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| Mian, showing you all his paradise. |
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| I was happily waving goodbye. |
