Thanksgiving, Part I

This year for Thanksgiving, I, again, traveled with my parents (see the Malibu post for another recent trip with them).  Plans were to drive to Colorado (8 hours) on Wednesday, eat dinner with about 30 of my relatives (with the addition of my good blog commenting friend Teresa!), drive back to Teresa's house for a 2 day visit, return to my family on Saturday night, then drive back to Kansas on Sunday morning.  Of course, I'm typing on Saturday, so most of the trip has taken place.

You may have noticed the Part I in the title.  If little had taken place, religiously speaking, I would be able to lump this into one post, but as of right now, I'm pretty sure this will be a 4 part series... that's how blog worthy this vacation has been.

Part I begins a few days before the departure, Saturday morning (the 20th).  I was in the basement of our house, actually watching 30 Rock on hulu, when suddenly my mother emerged out of the laundry/storage room and, out of the blue, interrupts Liz Lemon with "Tricia, how are you doing spiritually?"

"Ugh..." I groaned.  "Mom, I want to talk to you about this later."

"No, I want to talk about it now."  I paused my computer.

Then, I did it.  The thing I had been pushing away for weeks, confessing to the people who have always been so proud of me, knowing they would be very disappointed.  It was not according to my schedule, but I guess often times things involving other people aren't.  I laid out my cards before her.  She seemed mildly surprised.  She had tears in her eyes, but did not sob, as she said, "You're so much like me," then told me about her walk away from religion at around my age.  She asked a few questions about triggers.  Then, it was done.  She picked up her laundry basket and walked upstairs.

"Wait, Mom!"  She looked back.  "Don't tell Dad.  I want to wait until after our trip.  Please don't tell him yet."

She nodded, then, more slow paced than usual, made her way up the stairs.

I resumed my 30 Rock episode.  End of scene.

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Wednesday morning, the day of departure: my mom hadn't said anything else to me about my current agnosticism.  Our goal was to leave by 7:00, and it was about 6:30 when I passed my dad in the kitchen to grab a mug of coffee and my peanut butter toast.  I was, for once, ready very early and had time to kill, so I planned on watching the episode of glee from the night before that I had missed.  What is it about watching TV and having revealing conversations with my parents?  (I really don't watch much TV at all!)  On my way out of the doorway, my dad said,"Tricia?"  I pivot, mug and plate in hand.  "Yeah?"  "Um, Mom says you're having a kind of faith crisis."

I about dropped my breakfast.  "Dad, I'm not going to talk about this right now."  Then, I left, completely shocked and upset that my mom did tell my dad (yeah, yeah, I know that spouses should be honest about things like that, but I knew that both of my parents knowing would mean that all of my family would soon know, and that the 16 hours in which we'd be sharing a very confined space could feel like 61 hours).  For the next 40 minutes, I thought little about it (thank you, glee!)  Then, once everyone was actually ready (more like 8:10), sat in the car and waited for what I expected would be an onslaught of apologetics...