Day One in Winchester

Fannie likes the window down when we travel—wind, rain, snow or sleet. It doesn’t seem to faze her. She’s furry. 

It was raining for most of the trip down. We drove straight through, or Todd did, I should say. Thirteen and a half hours. Somehow he lost his wedding ring along the way. Probably pulling his hand in and out of his pocket with all those toll booths. There were quite a few. It will show up. It’s not the first time. One time it showed up in a box in the garage the following spring. The second time, inside the filter shelf of the dryer.

It will show up. 

“It will dry,” my son texted me this morning. 

The night before, paper towel in hand, I was dabbing water off the wet pages of Dad’s Bible at 1:30 a.m. It was a most unexpected moment. “God was teaching me something, Debbie,” I could hear Dad over my shoulder saying about the Bible I gave him 23 years ago after his sunk along with his boat. But that’s another story. 

Everything was perfect on the drive for the first ten hours or so, although it was pouring. It didn’t matter on the freeway. But with 120 miles to go, we turned off at Hwy 100 and something, thinking we were on the home stretch. Suddenly, we were on two lane roads, covered in fog, deep snow along the sides, when the temp dropped to 37 degrees.

“Google Maps is laughing at us,” Todd said, white knuckling it up and down steep hills, with warning signs to put your shifter in low gear, and occasionally 90 degree turns with last minute reflector warnings along the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Maryland to West Virginia…

“Word of God. Probably pretty hardy,” Charlie texts back this morning, along with new baby pictures of my first grandson, also Charlie.

God was teaching me something…I think again; wondering why out of all the things packed in the SUV, the rain chose the Bible and the book I borrowed from Nancy on Ezekiel. Everything else was dry, well, except for the unused section of my journal. “It’s like a sponge,” I said…still wiping the pages one at a time beginning in Luke, page 1533.”

This morning, Todd walks through the cozy living room between me on the couch and the fireplace here in our little house along South Cameron Street in downtown Winchester. “Too bad about the ring,” he says just as I think he’s about to say “the Bible”. That’s where my head is. “Twenty… how many years have we been married?” 

Twenty-six. 

“It was always too big. Amazing it lasted this long.”

“Almost twenty-seven,” I say. 

“Maybe it will show up.”

“I think so.”

Three times a charm, right? I’m wiping the inside of the back cover still swathed with dew with the back of my hand.

“Still wet.”

“Keep turning the pages,” Todd says. “That’s what I would do.”

Fannie is lapping up water from a bowl in the kitchen. My eye is twitching. The tea kettle is whistling. God was teaching me something…

“Man that thing works good,” Todd says from the kitchen about the tea kettle. “We’ve got Speakie if you want to listen to music,” he adds.

“I like the quiet.”

“Okay.”

Twenty minutes later, just as I’m finishing writing this little dibbly, Todd and Fannie walk in the front door with a bag. “You’ll have to try this breakfast sandwich. I ordered the chef’s choice and it sounds like you.”

“What is it? Beets and Arugula…?”

First day of vacation…Soak it up like a sponge.

And look at all the treasures I came across! Who knew I’d tucked all this inside the covers of this Bible.

Post Script: Todd went out to check the car one more time this morning. A man was walking past and they exchanged greetings.

“I lost my wedding ring,” Todd said. 

“Oh man, I bet you’re not going to hear the end of that,” the man said as he walked on, when all of a sudden he heard a shout.

“Hey! I found it!” Todd yelled.

“Yay!“ they both cheered. ✨

God was teaching me something… 💍 🤍