My First Trip to California

My First Trip to California

Christmas 2004 was our first Christmas together. We had only been dating for a couple months at this point. One afternoon in the middle of December Tim, my boyfriend, now my husband, came home and handed me a folded piece of paper, something he had printed off from work. The paper wasn’t even folded neatly. It looked rushed. On the back of the paper, scribbled in his chicken-scratch he called handwriting, were the words “Merry Christmas Baby!” I opened the paper and looked at it for a long time. To me it just seemed to be some sort of web page he printed out. I was puzzled. Why would he be giving me a printed webpage for Christmas? I mean, this was our very first Christmas together. How could he do something so thoughtless? Realizing that I obviously didn’t know what I was looking at, Tim quickly said “Baby, it’s your boarding pass. We are going to California! Merry Christmas, Baby!” I felt so silly at that moment, but that quickly passed and feelings of excitement and joy took over; they bubbled up like a geyser from the bottom of my stomach to the back of my throat. This was the best gift I have ever gotten for Christmas! I had never been to California, and I knew this was going to be the best trip ever. The day finally came to leave. We took a taxi to the airport to catch our flight. Our flight was first thing in the morning, so we had to be up and headed out early. The sun hadn’t risen yet and that morning was unusually cold. It felt like what I imagined the North Pole to feel like: cold and windy. No matter how much we bundled up the cold found its way through every opening in our clothing. We were freezing, that was until we got into the cab. The cab driver had the heater up so high that it felt like the surface of the sun. Our eyelids were literally sweating! Luckily, we only lived a few minutes from the airport. That was the longest 5 minute cab ride I had ever been in. The flight to...