A new, little boy.
That’s what my wife and I got to see this past Easter weekend as we made a sudden decision to jump in the car and zip up to Oklahoma City.
I’ve told the story more than once about my son leaving home when he was 18 and moving to Oklahoma, where he married the sweetheart of his life, whom he had met two years previously on the Internet.
Now, three years later the couple couldn’t be happier when they welcomed Henry Michael Chiri into the world.
My wife and I kept trying to figure out the best time and best way to get there, pretty much governed by my newspaper schedule, and when we looked at the Easter weekend we realized it just might be a good time since the news business generally slows down around any holidays.
When we checked plane tickets to fly to Oklahoma City we saw that they were “only” a little over $700 each. So my wife made the suggestion we drive there, taking two days up and back to break up the approximately 11-hour trip.
We used to hit the road for vacations like crazy and loved it, but as the years have gone by I became less enthusiastic about these long road trips. But the drive there is generally a decent one in terms of traffic since it is interstate virtually the entire way, and making it a couple of 5-6 hour days didn’t seem so bad.
And of course, I got to spend a lot of extra time with my own sweetheart and I know that deep down, that was really the reason she wanted us to drive up there together. Man, you might think she would be getting tired of me after 41 years, but she keeps trying to find ways to always be by my side. Ha.
OK, maybe she didn’t really want to drive for us to spend hours and hours next to each other, but the truth is we do enjoy spending time together, even after 41 years of marriage, so it was a chance to get away from it all and cruise away on a road trip like old times.
I’m a pretty typical guy when it comes to driving a long distance. Men are usually very focused on “getting there right on time” or comparing how many hours it took, or “you know, I got there 20 minutes faster than last time.” Yes, we’re pretty obsessed with the challenge of the trip.
But I have gotten a little better over the years of stopping here and there when we see something interesting on the way. I know my wife loves that and I’m going to go public here with my confession: “You are right Honey!” I really did like the stops.
We have a few that were especially memorable. One of them is a place called Buc-ee’s, a bit this side of Dallas. It’s really just a gas station—or is it? They had a lot of signs as we got close, luring us in with all the great things at Buc-ee’s, and even though it looks like a very large gas station from a distance, we found out otherwise when we pulled up. Somebody came up with the idea of making a great gas station, novelty store, convenience store, food store, gimmick store, and the cleanest bathrooms you will ever in—all as a stop on a road trip. They even had funny signs in the grass to encourage people to not let their pets leave anything behind.
The place was beyond packed on Easter Sunday as we came back home and my wife can’t wait to see a Buc-ee’s open down here. I did a little research and found out that Buc-ee’s has about 25 locations in the Midwest areas, mostly in Texas, and does promote the “cleanest bathrooms” ever.
But perhaps my wife’s favorite stop was really a simple Love’s Truck Stop gas station where she stumbled onto a unique neck pillow, with a giraffe head on one side. For those of you who were following the story of April the giraffe on the Internet the past month or so, with over one million viewers going online this weekend when she had her calf, I can tell you that my wife has been one of them.
If you don’t know about April then just forget it, or Google it. But it became an international story about a New York wildlife zoo streaming live video of a giraffe waiting to have a baby. We actually saw it happen live this past weekend.
So my wife was among those who bought a giraffe item that she probably would never have purchased in her life—had it not been for April and her calf. We have lots of pictures of her with the giraffe neck pillow on—she is quite cute in it—but no, you won’t see them on my Facebook page.
Oh yea, Henry. Grandchild number seven. He is cute as can be and my son appears to be working with his wife Lauren as a great team. We enjoyed seeing our new grandson.
Kevin Chiri can be reached by e-mail at kevinchiri@gmail.com.