Breakfast, Beer and Boo Hoo Hoo

We awake on Sunday to cloudy skies and ravenous appetites. And to find that the Krotchfelts had managed to catch their wee hours cab to the airport for home. We were now a party of 4. We pile our unshowered selves into a car and drive to a local breakfast spot without hitting any sort of cactus for once.

The breakfast spot is a unique blend of crunchy-healthfood-dog-friendly-comfort-food-liquor-license-pit-fire-flat-screen-tv-tuned-to-football goodness. We chow down and guzzle superior coffee.

And then the unthinkable happens. It begins to pour heavy soaking buckets of drenching rain. No poolside rehashing for us. Bring on the shopping.

There just so happens to be a great home décor chachka store right next to the breakfast place, so we take a few minutes to browse, shop for souvenirs, and dream about blending some of the beautiful decorative elements into our homes a million rolling acres away.

I am perusing the cowgirl selection of tween-appealing pocketbooks when a country song comes on in the store. It is instrumental but the song is one I recognize immediately. It is one that, like so many other country songs, is about a relationship having ended where one party has sentimental feelings about all that has happened. I remember when I’d first heard it years ago, for reasons I can never really find words to explain, it reminded me of my Dad. Sentiments he might have had. About his relationship with my mother, or maybe with us kids. It makes me sad to think about him being sad.

Maybe it is the fatigue, or maybe the hangover, or the melancholy end to a fabulous trip, but suddenly out of nowhere, I am sobbing.

I naively think at first that I can choke it all back and recover before emerging from the purse collection, but I am clearly mistaken about my own abilities on this. I bump into Kate, choke out a shorthand explanation and then step out into the glistening, rain-soaked rainbowed desert to recover. I am heaving deep breaths. It is the anniversary of my Dad’s death. I had no idea how it would sneak up on me. Dad evidently, is tapping me on the shoulder again.

I return to shopping and the girls. No questions asked. Love my girls for this.

We take a few priceless photos, including one of Joy sitting on a life-sized cast-iron donkey, the caption of which must read “Joy on her ass again” on someone’s Facebook page, and decide to continue shopping down the street.

And hours of shopping turns into hours of Bloody Mary’s with beer chasers, and in spite of still needing to pack and say our goodbyes and handle all manner of car rental-checkout-preflight administrivia, we are laughing our heads off about what a crazy trip it has truly been.

In a matter of hours we’ll be on our way home. And planning our next getaway.