The idea came to me while I was putting away the dishes.
Roscoe's company had a regular place where the drivers exchanged trailers.
It was a large truck stop beside the interstate, about an hour south of our house.
He usually left his blue rig there before driving home in his pickup.
I knew the routine.
I had known it for years.
There was something special about seeing him arrive after being gone so long.
Usually, I heard his pickup before I saw him.
Sometimes I would be standing at the kitchen window.
Other times, I would be folding laundry.
The sound always made me look up.
He was home.
For a few days, anyway.
That Tuesday, I thought about how excited the boys would be if they saw him before he reached the house.
They could surprise him at the truck stop.
He would never expect it.
I imagined his face when he climbed down from that big blue truck and found his grandsons waiting.
Maybe he would laugh.
Maybe he would pretend to be surprised.
Knowing Roscoe, he would probably tell them they had caught him.
I smiled to myself.
Then I went to tell the boys.
They were in the living room.
The youngest was playing on the floor.
The middle one was looking through something on the television.
The oldest was drawing.
I stood in the doorway.
"Would you boys like to surprise Grandpa?"
All three looked at me.
Their faces changed immediately.
"Is he coming home?"
"Not yet," I said. "But we know where he'll be."
I explained that we could drive down to the truck stop and wait for him.
The oldest wanted to know how we would make sure Grandpa recognized us.
The youngest already had an answer.
"We need a sign!"
I laughed.
"That's a good idea."
They started looking for something to use.
One of them found an empty pizza box.
It wasn't pretty.
It had a little grease mark near one corner.
But it was big enough.
They brought out some markers.
The three of them sat around the box, arguing over what color to use.
I watched them from the kitchen.
They took the job very seriously.
The oldest wanted the letters to be neat.
The middle one wanted everything colorful.
The youngest kept asking whether Grandpa would be able to read it from his truck.
"Make the letters big," I told them.
They did.
Every few minutes, one of them held the box up to check how it looked.
I didn't ask them to make it perfect.
It was a homemade sign.
That was what made it special.
They wanted their grandfather to know they had been thinking about him.
And they wanted him to see them waiting.
I thought about the little things Roscoe had promised to bring.
I wondered what he had bought.
The boys kept talking about it.
Maybe Grandpa had brought them toy cars.
Maybe he had found something at a place far away.
Maybe he had something for all three of them.
I let them guess.
Their excitement was contagious.
Even his mother noticed.
She was sitting in her wheelchair near the living room.
She had been quiet for a while.
Then she looked toward us.
"Where are you going?"
I turned.
"We're going to surprise Roscoe."
Her face brightened.
"You're taking the boys to see him?"
"That's the plan."
She looked down at her hands for a moment.
Then she looked at me again.
"I'd like to go too."
I wasn't sure she could manage the trip.
It would take some arranging.
Her wheelchair needed to be loaded into the van.
We would have to make sure she was comfortable.
I started to tell her that we could think about it.
But she interrupted me.
"I want to see my boy."
There was something different in her voice.
She sounded more like the woman she had been before the stroke.
Clear.
Certain.
Not asking permission.
I looked at her.
She looked back.
I smiled.
"All right. You're coming with us."
She gave me that crooked little laugh.
I went to get her blanket.
The boys continued working on their sign.
I helped them find the things they needed.
Then I checked the time.
We had enough time to get everything ready.
I prepared the van.
I made sure her wheelchair was secured.
I brought along a blanket because the afternoon was going to be cold.
I also made sure she had something warm to drink.
The boys carried their pizza box carefully.
They didn't want to bend it.
The youngest kept holding it up.
"Grandma, look!"
I looked.
"That's wonderful."
He grinned.
I don't remember every word they had written.
I remember the way they held it.
As if it were something important.
Because to them, it was.
We were going to see Grandpa.
That was all they knew.
I helped his mother settle into the back.
The boys climbed in.
I checked that everybody was comfortable.
Then I got behind the wheel.
Before we left, I looked toward the house.
The front door was closed.
The kitchen light was still on.
I had left a few things unfinished.
That didn't matter.
For once, I was going somewhere simply because I wanted to.
Not for an appointment.
Not for groceries.
Not to take somebody somewhere they needed to be.
I was taking three excited little boys and an elderly woman to surprise a man they loved.
The boys talked almost immediately.
They wanted to know what Grandpa would do.
They wanted to know whether he would recognize the sign.
They wanted to know whether he would hug all three of them at once.
I told them he probably would.
Then the youngest asked me something that made me laugh.
"Do you think Grandpa will cry?"
I glanced at him in the mirror.
"Maybe he'll get a little emotional."
I said it because I believed it.
Roscoe had always been a soft touch around those boys.
He didn't show his feelings easily.
But they could get him to smile without trying.
His mother laughed from the back seat.
"My boy doesn't cry," she said.
I smiled.
"Not even when he was little?"
"Not even when he broke his arm."
The boys wanted to hear about that.
She told them he had been stubborn even as a child.
She said he had tried to act like nothing hurt.
I listened while I drove.
Her voice filled the van.
For a moment, it felt like one of those family afternoons I had always wanted.
Three generations together.
Everybody going to see Roscoe.
I didn't know that the afternoon would become something none of us could forget.
At that point, I was still looking forward to his smile.
I was still thinking about the boys running toward him.
And I was still carrying that simple belief that forty years of marriage meant I knew the man I was going to meet.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: We Reached the Truck Stop Early, and the Blue Semi I Had Chosen Was Finally Coming Into View
Forty Years of Goodbyes, Packed Coolers, and Promises I Never Thought I Would Have to Question
Part 2 of 20
