Very Funny Biscuits

My mother-in-law turns 80 on April 10 so we've decided to take our annual trip out to visit her in Iowa over Easter/her birthday/Grace's spring break rather than our usual summer jaunt. The kids are already looking forward to staying in a hotel, and David and I are already looking forward to the cups of coffee we'll drink that will help ensure that this road trip does not become a marriage-ender/deal-breaker.

We took many a road trip growing up, and 'tho there was lots to loathe (such as the endless pleas from my little sister to play/talk/read with her when all I wanted to do was listen to my walkman and escape into my own little thoughts, and the stinky, Vantage, cigarette air that we all inhaled in the 70's and 80's when we went everywhere in our beat-up green Ford and then Chevy station wagon when my dad still smoked) there is much to look back on, laugh about and even wish for.

My mom was on all of the road trips that I remember: either all five of us, just her and the kids, or the two trips that she and I took out to Colorado. Most of our trips were from Boone to KY to visit our grandparents, et al, and they always started off with a trip to the Hardees Drive thru in Banner Elk. My mom was a health-food nut and we were raised on carob chips and tofu...together....so getting to go through Hardees was a twice-a-year treat. My mom was usually driving, even when my dad was in the car, because for as long as I've known him (and that's been all my life), he's never woken up, even when he's awake, until at least noon. In fact, when the movie Dancing With Wolves came out, we all decided that my dad's Native American name would be 'Sleeps-til-2:00.'

She'd gather breakfast orders ten or so minutes before her turn at the window and then she'd have to rattle off all of the various biscuits that we wanted. I can't remember when, exactly, it started, but one year, she said the word 'biscuits' in a way that positively set Daniel, Kate, and me into fits of laughter. I don't even know what can be funny about the word 'biscuits' (maybe she enunciated the 's' longer than usual so it came out 'bisssssssscuit' and since she had 5 to order it got funnier every time?), but from then on the highlight of our road trips (make that the highlight of our year) was to anticipate and laugh at the way my mom ordered biscuits at the Hardees Drive thru. It got to be that we would all begin laughing so hard as we drove up, when it became her turn to order, she couldn't do it because she too had lost the plot. This went on for years, and up until the last trip we all took together, it was the kids' mission to make my mom laugh so hard that she'd be unable to order the bisssssssscuits.

Another thing we kids did to embarrass my mom was to tear up little pieces of paper and put them in her hair without her knowing. Lunch was often at Wendy's, and second to the biscuit hilarity, nothing was funnier than my mom in line at Wendy's with a nest of paper-filled hair that she seemingly didn't know about. It dawns on me that she did know, and she happily played along so as not to spoil her kids' fun.

There was the time that we drove up to New York City, just my mom and the kids, where she was scared shitless from the moment we hit the New Jersey turnpike. We kept telling her it was no different from driving in NC (yeah right) all the while insisting that we listen to the Beastie Boys' 'No Sleep Til Brooklyn' until we got to Brooklyn. That was another thing my mom played along with...listening to the Beastie Boys on these road trips. She might have rolled an eye or two at some of their lyrics, but I'm sure she felt a sense of secret motherly affection, the same I'm feeling when Johnny tells me he wants a skateboard or heelys when he turns 4.

But the funniest thing about the road trip to NY was the way my mom freaked out the day we were leaving. She was petrified to get in her car and drive off in the actual streets of Brooklyn, NY!!! Paralyzed with fear, all of us packed up and ready to go, she simply wouldn't budge. We must have sat there in the car waiting to drive off for at least fifteen minutes. I didn't have a driver's license, and she wouldn't let my brother drive. She just kept saying, "I'm really unsure about this, what if somone hits me?" Early on what was probably a Sunday morning, on a, believe it or not, relatively quiet time in this Brooklyn neighborhood, only twenty feet away from Prospect Park, exasperated, I finally raised my voice, "But, Mama! There aren't any other cars on the road!!"