Originally posted December 3, 2021
You’ll get what I mean… Holidays get especially hard as you begin to grow your family and spread out. And growing up means you don’t get more than a day or 2 off for holidays. Especially Thanksgiving, which is a difficult mid-week squeeze trying to make time for the weekend when Black Friday doesn’t constitute a federal holiday to get off-work. So you get Thursday… Then Saturday & Sunday if you’re lucky! Gone are the school days of getting a couple weeks off for holiday vacations! I’m not yet far along enough in a career to ask for more days off than I’m given, so travel becomes a big commitment of time and money. I’ve been very lucky to be able to make holidays work to see my family no matter where I’ve lived and sometimes I leave wishing I had more time. But any time at all is special and important.
Braden and I made plans for Thanksgiving that were quite elaborate but gave us the chance to see SO many people that we’d been missing. We planned to drive to my parent’s house about 2 and a half hours away — taking both of our cars — so that we could have Thanksgiving dinner early on Wednesday night to accommodate seeing my middle brother and his wife before they had to be at her parents house. Braden and I took one car home so that Saturday we could fly to Nashville to be with his extended family for lunch. Then have his parents drive 2 and a half hours to where MY family is in Tennessee and see a bit of my extended family for a late dessert. Then ride for 12 hours in a car with my parents all day Sunday to pick up my car from their house… To drive 2 and a half hours back to Austin… Travel time was about 4 times the amount of family time we were getting but we were pretty insistent on making it happen.
Saturday morning started with Braden going to work at 3am. A nice early start to a hellacious day. Braden had a friend from work who agreed to watch our dog, Governor, for 2 nights while we travelled and we finally got their address realizing that it’s not only the town over, but they live about 50 minutes away from us. So, we make it work, Braden goes to work for a few hours, leaves early, gets home on the south side of Austin to shower and get Governor and drive him all the way north and to the town over and then all the way home around 8:30 am for our flight at 9:40 am… Cutting it close, but nothing we can do. We call an Uber to pick us up because we would be driving back and wouldn’t need to park at the airport and it begins to rain making traffic a little heavier than normal and the Uber take longer than anticipated… We get to the airport at 9:10 am and luckily only have carry-ons. I checked some online airport reports that claimed the security line was 2 minutes long. We get to security where the line is so long and I quickly realize that it will be a miracle if we make this flight. After 25 minutes, we grab our stuff off the conveyor belt and run to our gate where we are informed that they have closed the doors and we have to go to the counter to see about the next flight… I knew there wasn’t another flight and definitely wasn’t another direct flight that will give us any time at all with family before we have to drive back… We take a second to see what the options are and then realize that we just have to have our tickets refunded and go home. Luckily, we were refunded with no fuss. We were both devastated and the moment I grabbed the receipt for the refund, Braden got a call from an unknown number that he assumed was spam but he answered it anyway. It was a woman on the phone, obviously in distress. Turns out it was his work friend’s wife, crying at the vet clinic with Governor because he instigated a fight with their dog twice his size and lost pretty badly… All of this before 10 am.
Then we had to Uber back home to get to Braden’s car that… barely made it the first trip because he definitely needed to replace a brake pad and rotor before we made another 2 hour round trip to get our dog and another unexpected 5 hour round trip to pick up MY car that is just sitting in Houston now. Car repair places aren’t usually open on Saturday, especially on a holiday weekend, and especially not with last minute availability… So we go down the street and buy the parts we need to fix his car and just pray that YouTube is helpful. We’d already put it off too long and now it was an emergency.
After about 40 minutes of failure and yelling in our apartment parking lot, a guy comes walking by and Braden says “Hey, how’s it going?” The guy responds, “Good, how’s it going with you?” Braden’s like… “Uh, been better.” And gestures to the car he’s currently squatted under. The guy approaches and says “What you working on?” Then comes in close to get a look. We’re both thinking, is he gonna come over here and see we’re struggling and then walk away like, “Yeah that looks pretty bad! Good luck!” We’ve already lived too many lifetimes in this day. But instead, the guy asked Braden if he had a specific tool… Braden didn’t… and then asks if this was his first time doing this… It was. So the guy goes to his car to grab some tools and comes over to help. What?
He introduced himself as Nate, he lives in the building next to us and said that he heard the YouTube video Braden was watching and knew exactly what was going on. Nate stood with us and provided assistance and talked with us for 2 hours. He even left to get a part for us because we didn’t have everything we needed. Nate was our Guardian Angel! Because of him, we were able to have a smooth running car to get Governor and bring him home. Braden’s car is running smoother than ever. We gained some knowledge about how to perform that repair if we ever have to again and even gained a friend.
We finally were able to see Governor and picked up some pizza, wings and drinks on the way to his co-worker and his wife’s house to say… “Sorry for the trauma we caused you this morning. Can we still be friends?” And when we got our first look at Governor’s face… we felt terrible. I will admit that it mostly looked bad because they had to shave the wounded areas on his face to be able to clean them. Without fur, you could see much more bruising. Either way, he looked so pitiful. Poor bald-headed pup.
We enjoyed the company and finally drove Governor home and went STRAIGHT to sleep. This was just on Saturday! Sunday we could luckily just relax and be with the dog, but we were still pretty sad we missed our little bit of family time.
What was an extremely testing day came after a very testing month. Braden and I have both personally and separately dealt with a lot of unforeseen struggles and I’ve been so blessed to have someone to lean on. We’ve both been leaning on each other like an A-frame. When we were at the airport, I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t speak. I just was shrugging and looking at him. Braden was the one answering all the calls, asking for a refund, calling our Uber and reassuring me even though he would be missing time with his people. He held me up.
There was nothing we could do about any of the problems that Saturday brought, and all I could think about is how these moments are just small tastes of the struggles that will lead to growth in our marriage. I’m so thankful for Braden and even though Saturday felt like too much to handle, writing this from the other side gives me so much relief that I had Braden and we had so many surprising people hold us up. We’ve lost a lot of friends by moving far away, simply for being together and and even lost a friend from this earth. It’s felt very isolating for Braden and I, and I’m so thankful that he is a part of my A-frame. I’m thankful for the people that showed up. Even out of the blue to be our people in a moment where we felt like we had none.
Holidays are times we get together with our people and even though we couldn’t be with our family, I’m thankful for the couple who took care of Governor. And for getting to share pizza and wings in their home when we were supposed to be having desserts with my grandparents. I’m so thankful for Nate and his assistance and company he chose to provide when we should’ve been watching football with Braden’s grandparents and family. I’m so thankful we had people. And I’m thankful to have Governor home to heal.
Maybe our plans will work out for Christmas…
Update: Governor’s doing much better. Bruising is almost completely gone, just some scratches. Bald head is still a little freaky, but he’s not in pain! He’s acting his usual self which is a relief.
XOXO,
Texas Jess
P.S. – Thanksgiving wasn’t ONLY traumatic for Governor, my cousin’s dog got into some rat poison at my Grandma’s house during their Thanksgiving dinner and had to make an emergency vet call. Not a lucky time for the pups in my family!
Jessica Tanner 
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