Old man winter’s back in town!  Looks innocent enough, right?  Just a sheer, subtle layer of shimmering slickness.   Not to worry, right?  

Too bad I was driving and couldn’t grab a photo of the rear end of some guy’s car dangling overhead in thin air, high off the edge of the overpass where I-20 meets the I-35W.  It is just a little freezing rain…no need to slow below 75 mph.   It’s Texas, and besides, everybody drives a trruuuuuk that’s “Ford Tough!” 

It is the night before my Mom’s cataract surgery when all the warnings start rolling in to “pack up the babies and grab the old ladies” before Brother Winter’s Traveling Ice Skating Show comes back to town.   The fiasco that happened in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago has everyone even more jumpy than usual when the crazy, unpredictable Texas weather teeters on the brink between a little harmless rain, and sheer terror of 18 wheeler pile-ups that have cars and trucks littered along the highway like scattered Lone Star Beer Cans before the days of “Don’t Mess with Texas.”

We have postponed the surgery once already, back in January when Mom got pneumonia.   Whenever you postpone, it’s not just one appointment.   It sends descending dominoes on down the line for days.  Between pre-checks, post-checks, and follow-ups, it’s a total of six appointments and time scheduled off from work required to do both eyes.  Do I have to say, I really did not want to postpone again?

Mom and I tune in to the nightly news to try to make a judgment call as to whether to risk the 7:30am icy conditions.  It’s a bizarre “wintery mix” that is falling, somewhere in between a heavy wet fog and a light mist….not even heavy enough to appear on the Channel 11 News radar, but just wet enough to give the appearance of icy glass curtains on the Winnie.    We decide to retire, and make a judgment call early the next morning.

“Winniesicles”

I awake at 6:00 am without the aid of an alarm clock, which is unheard of for me.   I can hear traffic noise from the freeway a few blocks away.  I decide my barometer will be the RV steps.  They are always the first to freeze and the last to thaw.   If they are frozen, the drive is off.  I open the door in my bare feet, PJ shorts and tee shirt to an arctic chill wind that almost rips the door handle out of my hand.  The Winnie steps are dry.

I wait until a reasonable hour when I think Mom is up, and I call her.

Me:  “I think we should make a run for it.”
Her:  “I would just as soon skip it.  I don’t want to get out in this cold.  I think I will wait and have this done in the summer.”
Me:  “I will not be here in the summer, Mom.  I can’t take 110 degree heat living in a metal box.  You will be left to my brother’s care”  😉

This goes back and forth, on again, off again.  Understandably Mom is apprehensive about having her “eye cut on” on a good day, let alone a day where the background scene on the morning news is a screen filled with rows of flashing blue lights.  Finally the Surgery Center answers our calls to give us the news.  The window is closing.  We must make it there by 9:00am, or reschedule.   More ice and sleet is on the way.

With only an hour to drive 50 miles, we decide to make a run for it.   I have 15 minutes to  get the layer of sleep off my face, followed by the layer of ice off the windshield.    I try to take it slow and steady, coasting over the many bridges and overpasses between here and Ft. Worth, while humming softly the words to Jerry Jeff Walker’s, “If I can just get off of this LA freeway without gettin’ killed or caught!”

I know Mom knows the way there blindfolded, but I decide to use the GPS just in case.  I feel comfort in the calming, familiar voice of my GPS who has led me confidently 6,000 miles across the country, when my very astute Mom speaks up and begins to question her sense of direction.

Her:  “She is telling you to go I-30??”
Me:   “Yes, Mom.  I know you know the way, but I am going to trust the GPS, because I think it will be faster.”
Her: (in a 59 year habit of questioning my decisions asks,) “Well, you DO have the right address, right?”
Me:  “Yes, Mom.  1201 Summit.   I even have it memorized.”
Her:  “Summit??  We are not going to SUMMIT!  We are going to the Surgery Center on Rosedale, not the doctor’s OFFICE!!”

Fifty-nine years, I should know by now.  Forget Garmin.  Mom is never wrong.  😉

We arrive at the surgery center 10 minutes after the window has closed, but they usher us through anyway.  No waiting.  Just a few signatures on some legal-eze that I quickly read to her (leaving out the paragraph that says she will be subjected to an HIV test in case of an accidental needle prick.)   I grab up her valuables, and give her one last word of assurance before she is whisked away.

They tell me it will be two hours, so I retire to the waiting room.  There, I wait nervously, worrying that I have talked my Mom into doing something she was not comfortable doing.   But at 85 years old, she is more internet savvy than most middle aged folks, wondering why none of her High School friends are on Facebook.  😉   So she needs to be able to see!

I am growing more anxious by the minute, as the TV overhead softly spills out news of one business closing after another.   The man to my left engages in a cell phone conversation with someone telling him the roads are freezing in the town just over from us.   The woman to my right keeps shrieking to her hard-of-hearing companion, “WRECKS, I tell ya!!!  There were WRECKS every where! Wrecks ALL OVER THE HIGHWAY!”   Between the worry over the surgery and fear that I have put my Mom in harms way, I am sitting there thinking I am just about to……….(door flies open.   Angels begin to sing:) “Suzanne?   Your Mom is ready for you now!”  

We are done in record time.  We get her loaded up and hit the road, just as the next wave of precipitation begins to fall.  By the time I am nearing home, the windshield wipers are starting to look like giant Popsicles.

I get her safely inside, settled and comfortable, then begin the prep for some homemade soup simmering on the stove.  I feel a great sense of relief that we are safely home, with “One eye down, one to go!”