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| Home for Christmas | Norman Rockwell |
Christmas was crazy at my parents’ house, and I missed all of it.
We drove past my hometown (southern Michigan) to visit Luke’s parents (northern Michigan) first, and for a while, the weather was pretty crummy for driving. In northern Michigan, everything just froze, so it snowed and it was gorgeous; in southern Michigan, it was just enough warmer to do a little thawing and refreezing, resulting in an equally gorgeous ice storm that knocked everybody’s power out.
So while Luke and I went ice-skating and wandering around the gorgeous lakefront downtown in crisp winter weather, my parents hosted a houseful of four of their adult children(-in-law), and two of their toddler grandchildren with no power – which meant no heat in the single-digit temperatures, no water except what was manually hauled from the basement sump pump to flush the toilet with (not drinkable). I wasn’t there to help. We live in a day’s drive away, so between work schedules and carpooling arrangements, our travel plans were set when they were set.
