The Farmer Mom

Summer 2013 came to an end. It was time for my boyfriend to go back up to Canada to return to school for the fall and I had a decision to make. See, my mom was back home and newly engaged and her fiance’s family had moved in to our house. Home wasn’t really what it was when it was just her and I there. Not to mention, this new man in my moms life was actually the father of my most recent ex-boyfriend. Yeah… let me give you a minute to think about that. So, as you could imagine, I was ready to get as far away from home as possible.

My dad was living in Kentucky at the time. We hadn’t spent too much time together since I moved back in with my mom at 15, so moving in with dad seemed like a great way to make up for lost time, AND I would only be 10 hours away (here in Texas, we measure things by hours) from my boyfriend instead of 24 hours. Seemed like a win-win to me! I packed up my little maroon Saturn aka The Satty, like Tetris with all my belongings, and headed North.

It was so liberating, being the baby of the family and the first to move out of Texas. I’ve been the one to do a lot of the firsts out of us siblings, test the limits I guess you could say, seems to be a third child thing. Anyways, I’m headed North and it’s basically a straight shot from Texas to Kentucky. So I am rolling with my windows down because my Saturn didn’t have a working AC, having a dance party of my own, while singing my heart out to every song to come across my busted speakers; I am so excited to see what Kentucky has in store. I was officially moving to the BIG CITY! I’m about 14 hours and 2 five⁷! hour energy’s in, when we hit a traffic jam. My phone is dying at this point and traffic is at a dead stop. After nearly 30 minutes of not moving at all, I knew my phone wasn’t going to last the duration of my drive. My charger port didn’t work in my car, so I had made sure to charge my laptop completely before I left, in case I needed to use it to charge my phone. I get out of the car, stretch my legs, pull out my laptop and THE KEYS ARE MELTED!!! Not only were the keys melted, the laptop would not come on.

I started to grow anxiously frustrated, as I didn’t know how long I would be in this traffic jam that had now not moved in an hour. To either side of me were 20-30 ft deep embankments. I contemplated whether or not my little car could make it. I got out and asked the truck driver behind me if he had a flashlight, as it was getting dark now. He asked what I was going to do and I explained I was going to walk down the embankment to see if my car could make it. The truck driver is looking at me like I am nuts, but what he doesn’t know is that I was raised in East Texas and my first vehicle was a 500 Kawasaki four-wheeler at the age of 5. I knew how to make it out of just about any situation I could drive myself into. So I check it out and I am sold I can do it. I return the truck driver’s flashlight and he is watching me, entertained and deeply concerned at the same time. I pull off and down the hill I go, I start to go up the other side and my tires start spinning. I drop it in low gear, and steadily crawl up the other side and back onto the moving highway! WINNING!

I find the next gas station and plug up my phone, grab a map, and write down my directions for the rest of my drive. Keep in mind, my final destination is a high-rise apartment on Main St. in Lexington. I get about 30 minutes out from where I am going, and there are SO MANY LANES that have green or red signs above them, letting you know which where currently active to go which direction. Apparently that’s a thing where you have heavy traffic, but I had never seen anything like it. I am already ADHD as it is, you give me all the roadways with all these different lights and all the historic buildings, sirens everywhere, homeless people everywhere, I was a wreck and surprised I didn’t have an actual wreck. My phone was dead, I had made like 10 loops around Main St. trying to find this freaking apartment parking garage and I finally pull over, find a random outlet outside a random building and get enough charge to call my dad to find me outside.

Dad gets me where I need to be and FINALLY I get to hug my daddy-O! It was so great being reunited. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl, but he was more like my best friend. I knew my dad had a roommate, but I really didn’t know what to expect. My dad and this other veteran had just both gotten out of rehab and this man had cancer, so my dad was going to take care of him after his surgery, and it seemed pretty okay. I meet this old man, and he is a real grouch. I can not help but to be ever so smiley and polite and I am just naturally bubbly, so sooner or later he warmed up to me and he turned out to be a really cool guy. The apartment was a 2 bedroom apartment and this meant I was going to have to room with my dad. Not totally ideal or very comfortable, but whatever, I was trying new things right?

A couple weeks later, my boyfriend is settled into his new place in Canada and we are so eager to see each other. I knew with a passport that you could visit another country for 3 months at a time, so we planned for me to go and spend as much time as we could afford before we both ran out of money. I figured I could clean houses or find something to get myself by while I was there. Either way, my boyfriend and I were just desperate to be together. During this time, the economy was experiencing some drastic changes that was really messing with stocks and bonds, so they declared they were going to shut the government down for a few days to help things level back out. My dad being the United States Marine Veteran he was, had his suspicions about how things could get out of hand, so he recommended I leave before the shutdown.

He helped me pack my stuff the following day, and I took everything I had because who knew if my dad would move again, or who would be in that apartment and take something. So I head to Michigan and I am just so excited and overjoyed I am about to reach my love! He had asked me to grab some tobacco while I was in the states because it’s so much more expensive in Canada. So I grabbed a good bit of stuff for him with no mind about it.

I get to the boarder and pass through the american side just fine, then I get to the Canada side. This was only my second time to cross through customs, so Jack had been texting me helping direct me on what to do when I got there. This French-Canadian guy comes up all serious and starts asking me questions:

Officer: “What’s your full name, where are you from, and where are you going?”

Me: gives my full name, “..I am from Texas and I am going to see my boyfriend in Ontario.”

Officer: “How did yall meet?

Me: “We were both born and raised in Texas, his mom is a Canadian, so he has dual citizenship, and he came here for school because it was cheaper.”

Officer: “How long do you plan on staying?”

Me: “At least until Thanksgiving, but we aren’t totally sure.”

Officer: “I am going to need you to pull left into this parking lot over here.”

My stomach sinks, I feel like I am in trouble, but I haven’t done anything wrong. Boarder patrol starts unpacking my entire car and going through everything. They find the tobacco and start yelling about how you aren’t supposed to smuggle tobacco. The one officer picks up my phone and opens mine and Jacks messages and he starts yelling at me, asking why Jack was telling me what to say. I am completely honest the whole time, but he isn’t buying it. He is out to ruin my life at this point. He was accusing me of fleeing the country the day before a government shut down, that I was trying to secretly cross and seek asylum, and that I wanted to come use up their free Canadian tax dollars. After they’re done raiding my car, the main officer tells me to follow him, as we start walking towards this office building. He starts making phone calls as he stares at me like a freaking psychopath and tells me, “YOU AREN’T CROSSING TODAY!” Oh my freaking gosh, you can only imagine how distraught I am at this point. I am calling Jack and crying, he is asking to talk to the officer. The officer won’t hear it. I am begging him to at least talk to our parents, AT LEAST. Absolutely not. Instead he writes me up this list of things I have to have the next time I even THINK about crossing the boarder, such as: proof of residency, banks statements showing I have the funds to take care of myself, a letter from Jack saying he is fully responsible for me financially, a wedding date (I had a promise ring on), and traveling health insurance. LIKE WHAT?! and that is how I ended up on the freaking Canadian Watch List. Yup, apparently a 19 year old Texas girl poses a BIG THREAT!

They leave me to pack my car again after all my stuff is scattered about. My boyfriend and my parents are freaking out because it’s 8pm by this point and I am in one of the top most crime rated states in all of America. I’m bawling my eyes out and have no idea what I am supposed to do or where I am supposed to go. I get back to the American side of customs and the American Boarder Patrol Officer was so kind, he was overly concerned about how distraught I was and had me tell him the whole story. He asked where I was staying for the night and I told him I didn’t know. He told me not to stop until I got to Ohio. So to Ohio I went.

I found a hotel close to midnight now, all alone for the first time, completely discouraged and crushed that I wasn’t going to see Jack anytime soon, as if long distance wasn’t hard enough already. I curl up in the big bed and cried myself to sleep.

Next morning is October 1st and every hotel room door has a news paper with the official government shut down being front page news. My dads PTSD had my nerves up as I was expecting chaos, but all was pretty normal it seemed. There was no way in hell that I was going back home to Texas to endure the humiliation and agony of my ex becoming my stepbrother. So I decided to head back to Kentucky and start a new chapter there. A 10hr drive was still doable for Jack to be able to come see me when he had winter, holiday, and spring breaks, so why not?

I’m driving along and I see this object coming up on the left-hand shoulder of the highway and as I near closer, I see its a big bird! It was sitting up straight, but it’s head was under its wing and every time a car would pass, its feathers would fly up all wild and crazy looking. I passed and a couple minutes went by, and I just had to turn around. It took forever to find a place to turn around but I finally did and I came back up around the opposite side. This bird was the largest I have ever been that close to. I could tell something was wrong. I grabbed a blanket from the back of my car, slowly walked up behind it and threw the blanket over top of the bird. I slowly picked it up and I could feel its talons close up around the bottom of the blanket. I get back in the car and look up the closest veterinarian clinic. I had about 20 minutes to the closest one. About half way there,, I finally get the nerve to pull the blanket back and look at its face. When I saw that HUGE yellow eye staring at me, I started screaming, swerved, and felt my heart skip a beat! This thing looked fierce and I did not want to be on the receiving end of that beak!

I got to the vet’s office and brought him in, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, but the took me back with him immediately. I held him while they assessed him and they informed me that he was a Cooper’s Hawk and they were actually on the endangered species list. They assumed he had head trauma from being hit by a car, but believed he would live. They called in the Wildlife Nursery, and we parted. It was such a neat experience.

Leaving there, I didn’t feel so down as much I was earlier that day. I was hopeful that me and the hawk both would have a good future ahead of us, despite these lists we were on, and perhaps the whole reason I was turned around at the boarder the night before was simply so I could save his life. That was enough for me to believe that everything would be okay.

So, when you go to cross the boarder, travel light, don’t give anymore information that what they ask for, and hope to God the Boarder Patrol Officer isn’t having a bad day. I’ve gone back to Canada once since then (5 years later), and I am definitely still on the list. This time my boyfriend and I were married, had a baby, and had round trip flights to show we didn’t plan on staying, just wanted to celebrate our wedding with the other side of the family. They still, however, sent me to every boarder patrol officer to be questioned in customs, at the airport and it was extremely ridiculous. That was the last time we went before Covid became a thing and the world shut down and governments literally shut things down and implemented a bunch of stupid travel restrictions, but that is a topic for another time.

Sometimes things don’t go as we plan them, but it usually happens that way for a reason, and everything works itself out. Had I have been able to cross that day, I probably wouldn’t have found myself back in Kentucky with my dad, and that whole year we had together wouldn’t have happened. We ended up homeless for almost a week after all that because his roommate just disappeared and we didn’t’ have his half of the rent for a 1400/mo. apartment. I found us a place in the ghetto, a one bedroom apartment, that we only paid 450/mo. for, and what followed from there taught me so many important life lessons, that otherwise wouldn’t have been learned.

Now my dad is gone, and I am ever so grateful that we had that year together, even in a tiny, awful apartment. We endured, learned, and laughed so much together. Togetherness was all that truly mattered. So cheers to the unexpected unplanned surprises in life and for lessons learned along the way!

Until we meet again </3