1 post tagged “tantalize”

This past Labor Day weekend, my family and I went on a road trip to El Paso from Austin. It’s about 600 miles, a hard one-day drive, but we like to break it up across two days so that we aren’t killing ourselves.

The trip was to go see my father-in-law who had just been diagnosed with prostrate cancer. He’s a stubborn old coot and hard of hearing. We originally thought, when making this trip, that his condition was much more serious than it actually was. Come to find out prostrate cancer is pretty easy to treat – as far as cancers go.

So as visits go, we wouldn’t have had to drop everything to run out the door, but a visit was overdue and it was good for Maria to see her family again.

But on the way home, we did something that was really pretty cool. I had picked up a copy of Cynthia Leitich Smith’s book, Tantalize, for Sarah, our 12-year-old. But Maria thought it would be a good idea for us to read this one first, since it looked like it might be a little risqué.

I don’t know how it happened, but Maria started reading the book aloud to me while I was driving on the way home. When we switched and she drove, I read. I’ve never done anything like this before, but it was really neat. It was intimate, and personal, and just between us – Sarah was busy in the backseat watching movies on the portable DVD player.

The book was actually pretty good. It wasn’t as bad as we thought and we’re going to let Sarah read it. When we got home, we still had about 25 pages left to go. We quickly unloaded the car and went in on the bed to finish the book.

If you’ve ever listened to audio books as you drive, you probably know what I mean when I say that it really made the miles tick by. But the added touch of having Maria read to me – or vice versa – was really something I will cherish. It was a wonderful experience and I’m glad we did it. In fact, I’m kind of looking forward to the next road trip!

~Doug