Script ~ the Thanksgiving call

{Previous posts in this series}

After the harvest-time visit, we started planning to spend Thanksgiving together. But weather and the ongoing harvest prevented that. So I spent Thanksgiving with relatives in Georgia, mindful all day of the fact that Jim was to have been there with me. And Jim spent Thanksgiving 650 miles away, mindful of the fact that we were not together as we had hoped.

Thursday night was a regularly scheduled phone call night. I left the family gathering so I would be free in time to take his call around 9 PM. Right on time, my cell phone rang in my room in the lodge where I was staying in the north Georgia pine woods.

The wonders of modern technology! Although we could not be together as planned, we could still converse and enjoy spending time together on the phone.

In theory.

Cell phone reception was not good in the lodge, and after the phone cut off several times in the first two or three minutes, I pulled on my winter jacket, borrowed my dad's keys, went outside, and drove through the woods and up the hill to the highest point on the property. There I sat in the cold, dark car in the planetarium parking lot, and dialed Jim's number.

For the next hour and a half, we enjoyed the marvels of modern technology ... if and only if I leaned forward, tilted my head a certain number of degrees to the left, and did not dare move my phone. Even still, we lost reception more times than I could count.

But neither 650 miles, poor cell phone reception, a crick in my neck, or a body going numb from the cold could keep us from talking on Thanksgiving.