On the road in Y2K

I am so glad to be home. Tim did a wonderful job of taking care of the dogs and The Compound, and he is the best vacuumer in the whole world. As long as he remembers to replace the bag. He also had dinner cooking for us upon our return, AND he did the dishes later. How great is he?

I like seeing family and friends in other places, but for some reason, it gets harder every year to really enjoy being away. I miss everything about home: Tim, the dogs, my house, my routines.

I used to love to travel. By car or plane, I was always ready to go anywhere.

The year 2000 was a big year, and not only for traveling.

In January, Tom and I drove up to snowy northern Minnesota for his grandmother’s ninetieth birthday. We also used that trip to swing through Eau Claire (the Wisconsin city that many of the Timothy James Beck characters call home, and which I’d never been to).

Becky in Eau Claire

At that time, we didn’t really have a completed novel, nor were we Timothy James Beck. Tim, Jim, Timmy and I were just four friends having fun writing about the adventures of Daniel and his friends.

On our way back to Texas, Tom and I visited Steve R’s family in Southern Minnesota. Steve’s grave is in a quiet cemetery looking out over a valley; that was the first time I’d seen everything blanketed with snow.

Steve’s Valley

We also went through Nebraska to visit Jeff’s grave. I remember being in the car late that night, feeling a little melancholy and thinking how cold, flat, and dark everything was. I glanced up at the sky just in time to see a shooting star. The theme of the Quilt panel I made for Jeff was “Starry Night,” so it seemed appropriate.

Jeff’s Quilt panel

Timmy and JM came down in late January on the Southwestern leg of their travel adventures. The Compound was their home base for exploring Texas, and we hung out with Lisa, James, and KK.

Friends in Houston

That was just before James and KK moved to Maine. To console myself, I flew to San Diego on St. Patrick’s Day to see my friend Steve C and be part of his thirtieth birthday celebration. Jim and his partner Bill surprised me by driving down from Long Beach a day earlier than expected. We had a blast that weekend, shopping in La Jolla, being hosted by Dale at Steve’s party, and going to see RENT.

Becky, Steve, and Jim at RENT

RENT is one of our “friendship” things: I saw it first in Houston with Tom, Amy, James, and Joe. Steve had seen it before with some of his friends, then saw it with Tim and M.B. in NYC. I don’t know if Jim saw it with other friends before we all went in San Diego. We still need to suck Timmy into our RENT-fest to complete the circle.

During that trip, Steve took me all over the place, including San Clemente, where one of the characters in my unpublished “rock and roll soap operas” lives, and we also made a trip to Jim’s cabin in the Lake Arrowhead area.

I came home from San Diego in time for Amy and Richard’s wedding, then it was snow in April for me when I made an emergency flight to Pittsburgh because Lynne’s sister, Liz, died. Liz had been like another big sister and friend to me since 1968. I miss her especially at Christmas, because she always made such a big deal of the holiday, getting even a Scrooge like me into a festive spirit.

Amy, Tim, and Becky

After Tim visited for a week in May, our summer centered around the health of Pete and Stevie (the dachshunds) until they both died in August. But almost simultaneously with their health crises, we got an agent and a publisher for our first manuscript, which became IT HAD TO BE YOU.

In late September, Tom and I drove to Birmingham, then later to Gatlinburg, to meet Tom’s entire family for his mother’s sixtieth birthday. Gatlinburg was AMAZING. Then Tom flew back home, while I drove on to Ohio to spend some time with my sister. Then I drove from Dayton to New York, to pick up Steve C, who was visiting Tim.

Steve and I were supposed to find a hotel room somewhere outside the city that night on our way to visit James in Maine. Except THERE WAS NOT ONE HOTEL ROOM BETWEEN MANHATTAN AND PORTLAND. We had no choice but to keep driving, which wouldn’t have been a big deal if I hadn’t driven all the way from Dayton that same day. I think I was on the road something like 28 hours without sleep. However, when I ate the best pizza of my life at Portland’s Flatbread Pizza, every travel trauma was wiped from my mind. Also on that trip, James stole a big rock for me from a stream in Maine—shhh, don’t tell anyone. I don’t have rocks in my yard from a redwood forest in California or the mountains of Utah, either.

Becky and James in Maine
(Update: Steve said since he’s not pictured, I need to tell you that he took the photo.)

On the reverse trip, I spent two nights in NYC. Tim, Timmy, and I teleconferenced with Jim in California to work out how we were going to do revisions to the IT HAD TO BE YOU manuscript because we’d just gotten our editor’s comments while I was on the trip. It was all so new then, but I can honestly say that six books later, it’s still as exciting every time.

I continued the long drive back… spending another night in Dayton with my sister, then a night in Montgomery with my sister-in-law. I just saw her and her mother on this most recent trip, and they told Tom how I was practically comatose but still sitting upright, and all I could do was mumble, “Just keep talking. I’m listening.” I remember nothing. The next night, I was finally home in Houston.

That should have been enough, but at Thanksgiving, Tom and I drove with Margot to Salt Lake City. My mother and sister helped me work on Tim R’s Quilt panel, which Lynne later helped me finish, so I could dedicate it during a ceremony on World AIDS Day in December. That same panel is featured on the November page of this year’s NAMES calendar, linking two Novembers five years apart. I love that for one month, people all over the world will be looking at Tim’s name on his panel.

Tim R’s Quilt panel

After we left Utah, we took a trip through Oklahoma City, so we could see the memorial for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. Christmas of 2000…we were right here at The Compound. The next year would bring more traveling (including the October trip to NYC which I was determined to make, and during which I abducted Tim), but it also brought an end to my always-tentative peace with flying, and home has come to represent even more comfort and stability in this crazy world.