Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: PHONE (11/10/16)
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TITLE: Thank You Mr. Bell. | Previous Challenge Entry
By Daniel Rae
11/17/16 -
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My girls were furious. Why would I up and move to Cabo San Lucas at such a time? I was a single dad and for 30 years had been day to day with my 2 girls. 'How could I?' was an understandable gripe.
But even as adults there is only so much that I could reveal to my kids. Things were tough. I was on the verge of financial collapse. I still lived in the same home with the same car and the same suits. But the wolf was at the door and I was in a literal pinch. I couldn't explain this to the girls; No way. My eldest was 7 months pregnant with the very first grandson. And my 26 year old baby had just moved back home. How could a father held in such high regard, burden his kids with his personal distress?!
I couldn't do it. I couldn't tell them why I would empty my closets into the trunk of my car and point it towards Mexico; The California Baja; 3753 miles from home.
I'd taken the cowards way out. Rather than face my girls with the discomfort of my plan I just left. I justified the unjustifiable by telling myself it was the only way. If I called a meeting to see them, or met them individually, I'd cave. I'd abandon the only plan that The Lord had given me to resolve my crisis. In my weakness I'd inadvertently do long term damage. I just had to do this and patch it up later.
I'd deal with it all by phone when I was already long gone.
The events that led to my crisis are uncontainable in a limited word format, but I promise they were potentially legendary.
As financial Armageddon encroached the most unexpected development arose out of seemingly nowhere. A 30 year contact appeared out of the blue and offered me the entirely irresistible solution to my financial cardiac arrest. But there was a daunting caveat; I'd be required to relocate. Not down the street or across town. Not to a neighbouring province or near-by State. I had to leave my rather endearing Country of Canada, leapfrog the worlds greatest Nation by Nissan, then crawl down the Baja to Cabo San Lucas. If you've never done it, don't.
It was the last 50 miles that almost did me in. I was rambling through the pitchiest of black on Highway 1 between Le Paz and Cabo when every Longhorn on the Baja appeared out of nowhere, inches from my speeding car. A 2 ton cow crashing through the windshield into the passenger seat is a decidedly bad death, and I was 1/2 an inch of brake pad from that most gruesome of closures. Thanks to The Lord my car stopped and I made it at a snails crawl, the last few miles to town, where I would announce my arrival to my impending life-line then collapse at a Holiday Inn for almost 24 hours straight.
My girls had been barely pacified by my keeping of a conciliatory promise: I called or texted every day from every final destination. As the days added up the girls hearts softened and by San Diego they were way past anger and onto concern, to a fleeing father's relief.
I called my cousin tonight from Cabo San Lucas to North Vancouver. I accidentally called the phone number that he'd had as a kid, the phone number of my favourite aunt and uncle. They are early 80's and 100% with it. What a joy and blessing that call was. I was talking to my uncle John when my Aunty picked up the other phone and we were instantly on a 3-way call. I was so touched that she'd make her way to a second phone just because she knew I was on the line with her husband. I lapped up every morsel of that call, my dad's brother and his favourite sister in law. What a blessing to connect like only family can.
When I hung up the phone I had to wipe away some tears and thank the Lord for Mr. Alexander Graham Bell, who unbeknownst to him and his iconic invention, let the Lord bless me through some loved ones over 4000 miles away;
Just by picking up the phone.
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