I drove home feeling ever so sheepish. Amy offered me the out I’d been hesitant to ask for. “Lisa, you don’t have to do this anymore. I can do this on my own. I’m not going to quit if you don’t go every week.”
“I don’t mind going. It’s just that I’m not an aerobics kind of person,” I said, still trying to build my defense.
Excuses were never required with Amy. She waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. You’re under no obligation. You don’t have to go to another workout with me ever, unless you want to.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course! If I ever need a ride, I’ll call Shirleene.”
I imagined Shirleene could get Amy to burn a couple hundred extra calories each week if they carpooled because she would have Amy laughing all the way to class and home.
“You know,” Amy said, as I pulled up in front of her house, “I do appreciate your gesture, Lisa. I know you were sticking with me to keep me motivated. But honestly, you don’t have to be that loyal to me. I’m sure psychologists with impressive degrees write books about people like you and me.”
I relaxed. “That’s okay; let them diagnose us. We’ve always known we were a little crazy.”
“Just a little.” Amy started to get out of the car and then turned back, eyeing my untouched diet soda. “You going to drink that?”
“I hate diet drinks.”
“I know.” Amy laughed at me again and snatched up the drink. “Brutally honest. Yes, that’s the Lisa I know and love. Don’t let that true Lisa get lost again in her kindness to me, okay?”
By Labor Day Amy had dropped a solid eight pounds. She sedately nibbled on the potato salad, hot dogs, and ice cream sandwiches the rest of us ate at our combined family end-of-summer BBQ. I’m sure I ate twice as much as she did and paid for it with a stomachache that night.
I could tell that after the past three months of adjusting her eating habits, Amy was on the road to success. Organic omega-3 eggs and cold-pressed flax seed oil were some of the secret ingredients found in her refrigerator at all times. I was impressed with her diligence.
At Thanksgiving, Amy wore a new pair of dress pants that were two sizes smaller than the others in her closet. For Christmas everyone gave her gift certificates so she could buy new clothes. While the rest of us sat around at a New Year’s party at our house joking about our outlandish resolutions that we always listed but never kept, Amy only smiled. I knew she had smashed her glass ceiling on losing weight. The slow and easy approach allowed her the freedom to fully enjoy “a taste” of every Christmas goodie that came her way; yet she kept her metabolism working at an elevated level.
By Valentine’s Day Amy and I were busy pulling together our travel plans. We had our airline tickets, hotel reservations, new wheelie suitcases, and more tour books on Paris than either of us had been able to read in our free time.
I was teaching third grade that year, which is why Amy and I had set our travel dates to coincide with spring break. The substitute teacher I requested was a friend of mine. Even though I was only scheduled to miss a few days of class after we returned from Paris, I knew that if I was too tired to go back to work, I could leave the class in her capable hands for a full week after the trip.
Whenever we mentioned where we were going in April, people would invariably get this faraway look in their eyes and say, “Ah, springtime in Paris!” When we asked, almost all of them said they had never been to Paris, but if they were ever to go, they wanted to go in the spring.
Amy’s anticipation for our pending adventure grew, but her biggest dilemma was shopping. She didn’t want to buy new travel clothes until she lost those final few elusive pounds. The problem was she was running out of time to go shopping. I called her a week and a half before our departure date, and we made plans to shop on Saturday.
“The problem is I’m between sizes.” Amy stepped out of a dressing room with two pairs of jeans in her hands. “I don’t know if I should buy the ones that are a little too tight when I sit down or the ones that are a little too loose. I’m afraid that if I buy the loose jeans, I’ll fill up the extra space with croissants.”
“Buy both pairs,” I suggested. “Wear the loose ones on the plane and other times when we’re sitting all day. Then wear the tight ones when we’re walking around because they won’t feel tight, and they’ll make you feel good about all the weight you’ve lost.”
“You’re a genius,” Amy said, as we made our way to the cash register.
On the way home she asked if Joel was having any hesitancy about our trip.
“No. All along he’s said that he hopes we have a good time. He did make one request that I haven’t followed through on. He said we should buy travel insurance.”
“Not a bad idea,” Amy said. “I can work on that this week.”
I forgot all about the insurance until the day we left for Paris. Mark drove Amy and me to the airport long before the break of day. As he loaded my wheeled suitcase into the back of their SUV, I noticed two other suitcases already in the open space.
“Are you going with us?” I teased Mark.
He nodded toward Amy, who was looking half apologetic in the front seat. “Those are both mine.”
As I tumbled into the car, Amy explained how Mark had run out the night before and bought her another suitcase. “I was driving him crazy with my packing and unpacking. It’s torture to be between sizes. Life was so much easier when everything in my closet was the same size. It was your suggestion that finally solved the problem.”
“My suggestion?”
“With the jeans. You told me to buy both pairs, and I did. It suddenly made sense last night to pack two of everything. Now I won’t get all the way over there and be bummed out because I can’t manage to fit in the smaller clothes after a day of pastry tasting.”
I had been to Europe before. Amy hadn’t. She had only been on a few short plane trips, including the one their family took to Orlando when the kids were little. Amy was used to having Mark around to haul her luggage. I was nervous about how she was going to manage two suitcases as we moved through the airport and down cobblestone streets.
I blurted out, “You can only wear one thing at a time, you know. Trust me, comfort will win out over fashion every morning when you realize you’ll be walking all over the place and not returning to the hotel until late at night.”
“Lisa, last time you went you lived out of a backpack. You told me you only took two T-shirts for ten days.”
“I took a few more this time.”
“And so did I,” Amy said with a flip in her voice.
Mark kept looking straight ahead and driving. He had seen us take our sparring positions before and knew better than to step in as a referee.
I looked out the window and reminded myself that this trip wasn’t going to be like last time in any respect. This was Amy’s turn to encounter Paris, and if she wanted to show up with two suitcases full of wardrobe options, who was I to shame her? She undoubtedly still had visions of making a debutante entrance.
We changed the subject and arrived at the airport in plenty of time. Acting as our valet, Mark toted both of Amy’s suitcases into the terminal. She carried her purse and medium-sized carry-on bag while I easily maneuvered my compact pieces of baggage. Mark stayed with us until we had checked in for our flight and reached the security checkpoint.
As he kissed Amy good-bye, I wished Joel had come as well and was giving me a passionate send off, too. Joel had offered twice to come, but I had insisted that wasn’t necessary. We had said our ardent good-byes the night before and left each other on sweet terms. Joel had asked that I bring him back some interesting sort of French food that would travel home well. I, of course, already was thinking chocolate.
That’s when I secretly wished I’d brought two suitcases. It was going to be hard to pack a serious amount of the good stuff into my already full luggage. Maybe Amy did know more about making a trip to Paris than I did.
Due t
o an electrical storm, our early flight was delayed. We waited in the boarding area for an hour and ten minutes before the announcement came that our flight was canceled. I’d never seen such a crazy scramble of frantic travelers.
Thanks to my aggressive advance through the terminal to the service desk, we were among the first to ask about rescheduling our flight. The airline employee studied our paperwork, checked our passports, and typed on the keyboard as if every key was sticking and needed extra coaxing to move. “We have a direct flight tomorrow morning at 8:10 that will get you into Paris at 9:20 tomorrow night.”
“Nothing else going out today?” I asked.
“No.”
“What about a flight with another airline?” Amy still was breathing hard. “Who has a flight that goes out today?”
The woman tapped the keyboard again with renewed aggressiveness. “I’m showing two more flights today, but …” She tapped some more.
“We’ll pay extra.” Amy reached for her wallet.
“I’ll need to see your tickets again.”
Amy looked at me and said, “Ooh!”
“What?”
“I almost forgot. We have travel insurance! Here. What does our policy cover in a case like this?”
The woman looked perturbed. “I’ll need to call a supervisor who can assist you with that.”
A uniformed gentleman came out of the back area and clearly was not pleased to see Amy’s “get out of jail free” card. He skimmed the forms and scowled at the computer screen.
“Okay,” he said after a few seemingly effortless clicks. “Two for Charles de Gaulle Airport departing from gate 83 in one hour.”
“Thank you,” Amy and I said in unison.
“And,” he lowered his voice, as if it was particularly painful for him to announce this final adjustment. “Both of your seats are in first class.”
Amy and I scooted to our gate, settled into our wide reclining leather seats, and shared a quiet giggle.
“This is so cool!” Amy said. “Let’s hear it for Joel’s insistence that we buy travel insurance including upgrades on the next available flight!”
I felt proud of my husband at that moment.
Our flight attendant offered to take our coats and hang them up. He then offered us orange juice, which was served in glass tumblers. Amy and I clinked the rims of our glasses in a toast, and Amy said, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good.”
It seemed an odd choice for an orange juice toast. As soon as I got the pulp out of my teeth, I asked, “Did you just make that one up?”
“That one what?”
“That toast about tasting to see that the Lord is good.”
“No, it’s a verse. In Psalms.”
“I thought it sounded familiar.”
Amy leaned closer. “I’ve been working on a sort of secret project.”
“You have? Something other than this trip?”
She nodded. “I’m collecting verses that have to do with adjusting my eating habits. I’ve memorized some of them, and I’m thinking of having them printed up on little cards or maybe made into posters. Shirleene said I should have them made into refrigerator magnets. She said some of them would act like a stop sign whenever a person went after something in the fridge she shouldn’t be eating.”
I’d never noticed verses that had to do with eating habits in the Bible. But then, I’d never looked for them.
“What are they?”
“Do you mean what are the verses?”
“Yeah, I want to hear some of them. You’ve got my curiosity going.”
Amy looked as if she was blushing a little. “Okay, first you have to keep in mind that they’re supposed to be for encouragement, and they’re not all supposed to be taken literally.”
“That’s okay. Go ahead, tell me some of them. I want to hear.”
“Okay. Well, there’s Isaiah 55:2, ‘Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good.’ ”
“That’s a good one,” I said. “Especially the ‘eat what is good’ part.”
“Right. Okay. And then Proverbs 16:24, ‘Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.’ ”
“Very nice.”
“Then there’s Shirleene’s favorite. Actually, she’s the one who got me started in looking up these verses, because she told me that Leviticus 3:16 was her life verse.”
“Her life verse? From Leviticus 3:16? Are you sure she didn’t mean John 3:16?”
“No, it’s Leviticus 3:16. I’m sure.”
“So what is it?”
Amy hesitated, as if she had to explain to me that Shirleene said or did things out of the ordinary.
“Come on, Amy. I know Shirleene. I can take it.”
Amy grinned. “Okay, here it is. ‘All the fat is the LORD’S.’ ”
I covered my face with my hand and kept my chuckle inside. I could just hear Shirleene delivering her line in aerobics class, rallying the others the same way she did with her, “Shake what yo’ mama gave you!” line.
“I looked it up,” Amy said, defending Shirleene’s choice. “The chapter is about sacrifices. I told Shirleene that, and she said we’re supposed to be living sacrifices. So when we get burned up ounce by ounce, it means that all the fat can very well belong to the Lord. It’s our own little praise offering to Him.”
I grinned at Amy, letting her know she didn’t have to worry about offending me. Her explanation was honest and delivered without any disrespect for the great God in heaven whom I knew she honored.
With a tip of my orange juice tumbler in her direction, I leaned back into the cushiness of first class. “I’m not my mother, Amy. You can quote any verse you want to me at any time, and I will be happy to hear it.”
Amy lowered her chin. “Then I guess I should tell you my personal favorite.”
“I’m all ears.”
“It’s Revelation 3:2.”
“Ah, an end-times verse!” I said, knowing that as the last book in the Bible, Revelation carried all kinds of passages that were subject to a variety of interpretations on how the world was going to end. Perhaps Amy’s verse also was open to an assortment of interpretations.
“Actually, it’s more of a midlife verse that applies to a woman like me who started to lose weight and suddenly finds she’s lacking in the muscle-tone department.” Amy lifted her arm and jiggled her underarm flab for emphasis. “The verse says, ‘Wake up! Strengthen what remains.’ ”
This time I laughed aloud. Amy smiled winsomely. I wondered what God thought of Amy at moments like this. Somehow I had a feeling she made Him smile.
I often found myself thinking the way to find favor with God was through the obedience school of my childhood training. Every verse of Scripture and every theological premise had to be understood flawlessly before I could discuss it with others. Amy, however, seemed to revel in the access she had to all that was sacred. She loved exploring the depths of truth in all its possible forms. I wondered if she was one of those children who continually brought a twinkle to God’s ever-watchful eye.
I had a feeling Amy was in line for plenty of blessings before this trip was over, and I didn’t mind absorbing any excess. Especially when that excess started with a flight over the Atlantic Ocean while reclining in first class with soft pillows and cozy lap quilts. We even were offered small printed menus listing our options for meal service. Menus!
Our beef Stroganoff was served with warm dinner rolls and white cloth napkins. The nest of fresh greens came with juicy mandarin orange slices and caramelized walnuts.
After the most luxurious flight either of us had ever experienced, Amy and I landed in Paris and were herded efficiently through customs. We collected our luggage without a snag. I watched Amy devise a piggyback system with a strap on her luggage so she could pull the pieces behind her like a train.
“I’m impressed.”
“You better be,” she answered with a wry grin.
As we navigated our way through the airpor
t, aside from the overhead announcements being delivered to us in French, nothing yet seemed extraordinary. But Amy’s expression showed that she found everything happening around her magical.
“That guy back there just told the woman that their flight to Milan was delayed.”
I kept walking, expecting Amy to explain why that was relevant.
She looked over to the side and then said, “Those two girls with the cell phones are mad at their friend because she didn’t call them yet.”
I realized what was happening. Amy was eavesdropping on the sea of French conversations while I ignorantly sailed by all the same people without a clue as to what they were saying. I began to grasp what an advantage Amy’s familiarity with the French language was going to be.
“Do you know which one of these signs directs us to the taxi stand?” I asked.
Amy looked up. “Sure. It’s that one.”
I followed her out into the night air and told her how much I was going to appreciate her translation skills.
“I hope I can come up with enough French words to tell the driver the name of our hotel,” Amy said.
“If we have any problems, we can just show him the paper with the printed-out reservation.”
“Did you take taxis a lot the last time you were here?”
“No. I don’t remember ever taking a cab in Paris. We were seeing Europe on ten dollars a day. That meant a lot of walking and taking the bus or the Metro. Not taxis.”
Amy and I moved to the front of the line with our luggage, and as the next black sedan taxi pulled up, Amy said, “Check out the license! It looks like a subliminal ad for the flax seed oil I use.”
I squinted through my glasses and read the numbers: 050FLX50.
That was my first clue that Amy might be experiencing jet lag. She was seeing word puzzles in license plates.
The driver hopped out and quickly stuffed our bags into the ample trunk before running around to his door and taking off into the airport traffic with a bolt.
“Hotel Isabella, s’il vous plaît,” Amy said, sounding eager to try out her French. “Hotel Isabella,” the driver responded. “Oui.”