The Day I Became Family

“Hi, Mom!” Jenny shouted, tossing her bag in an empty chair.

“Put your backpack away and get dressed in something nice,” I called from the kitchen.

Jenny came in, her usual jeans-and-T-shirt-with-a-sweatshirt-tied-around-the-waist outfit on. “Why?” she asked.

“Because I said so, and we are going to have supper at your dad’s parent’s place tonight. Your cousins Tina and Andrew will be there,” I replied, sipping my not-so-hot coffee.

“In jeans and T-shirts, I bet,” Jenny snorted, wiping a juicy green apple against her shirt.

“Now Jenny, their invitation was marked as formal. And we’ve never met them, so I want to put  good impression on them; that we’re actually feeding you and your dad and I take care of the family just as well as I should,” I said, looking over my magazine.

She bit into the apple. “Fine. I’ll put on my jean dress and leave on this shirt.”

“I already have an outfit ready for you on your bed,” I answered, reading an article.

“Ugh! Nothing is fair anymore!” she groaned, and stomped upstairs to meet her doom of her cute red pencil skirt her Aunt Penny bought her last year. I waited for her to find it.

“Ugh! Mom! This dress is not okay for me!”

“Wear it!” I yelled back.

“Ughhhhh!” she groaned back.

We waited a few minutes before Rick came home so we could leave. “Are we ready?” he asked as we burst through the door and past him.

              “Yup, let’s go. I don’t want to be late,” I announced, slamming the car door shut. Rick and Jenny exchanged looks and shrugged, and then got in the car after me.

              “Why the rush, honey? We have an hour and it only takes thirty minutes,” Rick asked, buckling his seatbelt and turning on the car. “All buckled, Jenny?”

              “Yeah. It’s stuffy in here,” Jenny murmured from the back.             

              “Honey, I just don’t want to be late, that’s all. I want to, well, you know. Never mind,” I said, looking out the window.

              “No, I don’t. Go ahead, I’m listening,” Rick pushed, swerving around a reckless driver.

              “It’s just that I want to make,” I began.

              “A good impression? Aw, c’mon, dear. You’ll be fine. You met them at the wedding and they loved you,” Rick protested.

              “That was your sister. Your parents left because they had another wedding to go to, and I only saw them from when we were saying our vows,” I corrected him.

              “Oh, well. My sister loved you and obviously put in a good word about you, then,” Rick said, swerving around a twenty-mile-an-hour driver, who was texting.

              “It’s not the same, Rick,” I moaned.

              “Mom, I’m staying the night with them,” Jenny announced from the back seat. “Gram just texted me. ‘Can’t wait to see you tell your parents that you are staying the night’.”

              “Ok, that’s fine,” I said. “But Rick-“ I broke off, seeing a long line of traffic ahead.

              “Good thing we left early,” Rick commented as we came to a slow stop.

              “Yeah. Good thing,” I whispered, trying to see down the long line of cars.

              “Oh no,” Rick said.

              “What?” I asked.

              “The heater stopped.” Rick banged on the dashboard a few times, trying to get it to work.

              “Still stuffy back here,” Jen said, not hearing what Rick had discovered.

              “I’ll have to open a window. It may be cold, but at least you’ll get some fresh air back there,” Rick said, rolling down the window.

              “Rick, no, wait, I-“ My words were drowned out by a whoosh of air. I shut my eyes tight, and felt my hair slowly come out of its long worked on bun. Rick rolled the window up.

              “I am so sorry, honey. I…” he stopped, laughter erupting from behind us.

              “Oh, Mom!” Jenny hooted.

              Rick tried not to grin, and looked out his window. “Sorry not sorry.”

              “Oh, be quiet,” I scowled, pulling down the mirror from the visor. My hair was tossed to one side, tangled around in my bobby pins. The decorative pin sat in my lap, halfway mingled in my hair still.

              “Ugh!” I groaned, brushing it into a semi-nice look with my fingers.

              “Almost there,” Rick announced, pulling off onto a ramp which led to the middle of nowhere.

              “Great,” I mumbled.

              We pulled into a long, twisting driveway, which led to a huge blue farmhouse, hidden behind several old oaks and elms, a maple in front, a huge weeping willow next to the house, giving the house a very homey feel to it.

              Next to the house was a large barn, and just off of the house was a shed, which I stayed close to to shelter my hair from the wind as I continued to comb out its tangles.

              Jenny gave one last giggle. “It’ll be fine, Mom.” She pushed the doorbell, but just as she pulled her finger back, Mrs. Anderson appeared at the door.

              “Oh, come in, come in!” she beckoned. She had a soft blue flowered dress on, a stained, worn pink apron over top. Her gray hair was pulled into a bun, oval glasses sitting on the bridge of her nose. A classic grandma. Behind her stood an old man, which she introduced us as Great-grandpa Bridgewakes.  Mr. Anderson was in a warm sweater and jeans, gray and balding, a pair of square spectacles slowly sliding down his nose.

              “Why, hello, folks,” he chuckled. “Come find a seat. There’s plenty of room, come on now.”

              We fell into several cushy and luxurious chairs after Rick hugged each of them and shook hands with Great-grandpa Bridgewakes.

              “What a beautiful house!” I remarked, looking around at the antiques on shelves and pictures hung in frames on the walls.

              Mrs. Anderson smiled. When she smiled, her whole face wrinkled up in joy, her face pinked, and her green eyes sparkled. That was also something I admired. Mrs. Anderson had pure green eyes, and passed some down to Rick, who had blue-green eyes.

              “Why, thank you, dear. It was my father’s house, and his father spent the end of his childhood here, so it is almost a hundred and seventy five years old.”

              “What’s that, Emma May?” Great-grandpa Bridgewakes wheezed from the corner, where he sat in a big rocker.

              “I was saying that the house was very old,” Mrs. Anderson half-yelled across the room.

              “Oh,” Great-grandpa Bridgewakes said, leaning back in his chair. He was obviously deep in thought, and somewhat confused. “I didn’t think I was that old,” he chuckled.

              We all laughed. A timer in the kitchen went off, and Mrs. Anderson smiled again. “Supper’s ready!”

              “As we sat down at the table and passed the many foods around, I finally felt where I belonged. At home with Rick and his family, and you. And that’s when I became part of a family,” I explained to Jenny, putting her hair up in a bun.

              “I’m not ready,” she groaned nervously, turning to me. I straightened the edges of her wedding dress and nodded to the cousin who was a bridesmaid to go ahead.

              “You will be,” I whispered. “You already are.”