Can We Keep A Secret?

      My son Scott's 35^th birthday was this past week. My wife Wendy and I celebrated by driving nine hours to St Louis to celebrate with his family there. As a surprise, my other son Greg also was making the nine-hour drive with his family of five. I would head southwest from Michigan on Thursday, with my son Greg hitting the road on Saturday, the day of the party.

     Since Greg was leaving during a slew of annual garage sales along his preferred highway in Michigan, he had planned to avoid traffic by taking back roads into Ohio before heading to Indiana and beyond. On Thursday while driving ourselves through Ohio taking only main roads, Wendy checked the map to make sure Greg's planned route would take him back to the main highway.

     Then she texted Greg the route: “52 to 20 then to 66 to Defiance. Exit will take you back to 24.” She then waited for him to text back. He didn't respond quickly as was his custom. After a few minutes had passed, Wendy thought she'd check to make sure her text was sent.

     It was sent. But not to Greg. It went to Scott, the b-day boy whom we were planning to surprise. My wife had texted the wrong son. Wendy cursed in the car, then tried to delete the tell-tale conversation from her cell-phone.

     But had she succeeded before Scott could see the errant text message? A little while later our answer came when Scott answered the text, asking, “Are you taking the back roads?” We texted back a lie and said we were.

     Maybe our secret was still safe. But after arriving in St. Louis, Scott asked us how the back roads were. Now maybe some of you can lie with a straight face . . . but I can't. With a guilty smile, I said something about having a hard time passing slower moving vehicles on those two-lane roads, then deferred to Wendy who just broke out laughing. Still, Scott had no inkling of the surprise. Probably thought we'd just lost it.

     The day of Scott's party, he wondered what was up when we all kept looking out the window, including Scott's wife Kristin who had instigated the surprise visit, inviting Greg to come. Scott also wondered why his wife bought extra beer. Still, he didn't guess the truth. When Greg's boys came down the sidewalk and Scott spotted them, I saw his jaw drop. He even seemed to get emotional though he denied it later.

     In this pandemic, little family surprises like this help to elevate spirits. It makes you forget for a moment all the bad news you hear on TV. A day before the party, I was going to walk with Scott as he took his three little ones to the local park.

     “There's no corona-virus there,” explained my three-year-old granddaughter Gwen. How did she know that?? And did she really understand what corona-virus was?”

     Come to find out, there was an ongoing tug of war between local parents who felt it was safe to use the playground equipment and St. Louis park officials who kept roping off the swings, slides and climbing structures with orange caution tape to make them off limits. The officials would put the caution tape up and some parents would just as quickly tear it down.

     So for Gwen, caution tape up meant that the corona-virus was there and she couldn't ride on the swing. Caution tape down meant that there was no corona-virus there that day. That's about as much as a three-year-old can understand.

      Lucky for Gwen, on the day we went to the park there was no corona-virus there.