I'm Gonna Do All the Things for You

It's time for my December dutiful daughter trip.

That means a couple of days on the northern neck helping my parents transform their house into a winter wonderland of their own making.

I made 22 trips up and down two flights of stairs to bring down box after box of wreaths, ornaments, decorations, lights and ephemera, the better to clutter up their house in seasonal mode.

Outside, I held the Christmas tree while my Dad sawed and chopped the bottom off and my Mom watched anxiously from the back porch, sure there would be a tragic accident with the axe.

She's the worrier, not me.

After six hours of decorating and wrapping gifts, with only one break to eat lunch and cut the last of the pink rosebuds still miraculously on the bush three weeks before Christmas, Dad and I made a break for it.

We had talked about going out to one of their favorite local places, the Oaks, for dinner but Mom didn't feel like getting cleaned up, so we compromised by ordering our food to go.

That meant Dad and I were going to head out to pick it up.

But because they live in the sticks, you never go out for solely one reason, so he decided to load up the truck (according to him, if you live in the country, one of your vehicles must be a truck) and we'd make a stop at the recycler before the restaurant.

So there we were in the late afternoon, tooling along back roads (my father will never take the direct route when a back road can be meandered) and talking about Virginia politics.

He told me to keep an eye out for deer as it got toward dusk.

By the time we'd dropped off the recycling, it was too late to take the branches he'd brought to the wood yard, a place I'd never even heard of but would have been curious to see.

But we'd finished our chores early, so he suggested taking the scenic route to the restaurant, until a better idea occurred to him.

"Or we could go and I'll have a beer and you can have some wine while we wait for the food."

The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.

There were a half dozen people at the bar when we got to the Oaks where the music was blaring and the owner's wife Nancy recognized Dad and greeted him like the regular he is.

According to the chalkboard, tonight's specials were blackened prime rib and coconut shrimp.

As we sipped our bevvies, the  Temptations were singing one of my favorite Motown classics, "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," and a couple of locals were talking about how you needed to allow extra time to get home in the evenings these days because of all the deer in the roads

Nancy came back and asked if she could tempt me with dessert (duh) and we added a magnificent slice of coconut cake to the order after I told her that I was the only one of my parents' six daughters who, like them, loves coconut cake.

Once the food came out, we walked outside with our dinner and Dad pointed out the new moon, insisting that I move around a stand of trees to better see it.

Starting back on yet another back road home, we hadn't gone two miles when a couple of deer appeared on the side of the road and Dad neatly swerved around them in his 27-year old truck.

I don't know that I've ever cruised the countryside with my Dad in his truck before. What a distinct pleasure I've missed.

Back at the house, Mom had the Christmas music on and had set the table with (what else?) her holiday plates and we heaped the Oaks' home-style cooking on them.

It had been way too long since I'd had a good hamburger steak smothered in gravy and onions and finished with coconut cake.

Sometimes it's both delicious and delightful being the dutiful daughter.