The Lemonade Tour

TRAVEL THERE: THE LEMONADE TOUR

When life give you lemons, make lemonade. It’s good advice, even if I have no idea where it came from.

The Lemon

My dear friend, Deb, had a real lemon to tackle. She wanted to bury her father’s ashes with her mom in Ohio and she needed to stop by a small town in Missouri to finish some business for him.She’s a pretty tough cookie and probably could have handled it all on her own, but there was no way I was going to let her.

Lemon Turned into Lemonade with Friendship

Originally, we thought it could be a quick weekend trip, but then she found out that a weekend interment would be prohibitively expensive, so we had to be there on a weekday.  We juggled dates and decided to take off on the Wednesday before Memorial Day.  We also decided to add a few days of fun at the end of the trip.  We’d both lost our fathers during the past year and needed to turn the page.

Another familiar old saw that frequently proves true for me is that life is what happens when you’re out making other plans.  I started planning a great trip for us that focused on her art student son, who was supposed to travel with us.  Knowing Memorial Day weekend is a big travel weekend, I went ahead and booked our accommodations and  bought tickets to a few of our “must-see” attractions.  Then two things happened, her son realized he’d already made a commitment for that weekend and my mom fell and broke her arm.  Breaking an arm isn’t that big of a thing, unless you’re eighty-five years old, you break it where she broke it and it’s the arm you use with your cane.  Though we never actually discussed it, both Deb and I knew I couldn’t leave if I couldn’t get Mom squared away.

By some miracle (Well, probably more like a series of miracles), on May 22nd at about seven AM, Deb was in my drive way and we were loading my bags in her car.  Thank you to all the family and friends who made it possible for us to go on The Lemonade Tour.  Thanks to all the prayer warriors who kept angels watching over us through out the trip.  Thanks to our husbands who didn’t understand why it was so important to us, but gave us their blessings nonetheless.

Over the next few Fridays I’ll share our trip with you.  The first days of the trip were all business.  The last few days were nothing but monkey business.  We stayed in some great places, ate some delicious food, cried some and laughed a lot. Along the way, I hope something I share will help as you plan your own travels.  The first leg of the trip is Dallas to Nashville.  We’ll head there next Friday.