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“I mapped out our road trip, with pit stops for gas, bathroom breaks, and maybe even a special stop for lunch.” Maye tapped her laptop to display the slide with their course charted on a map. “See, we leave at 7:00 a.m. and have our first stop between 10 and 11 a.m. Then, drum roll, please.” Maye tapped to display the next slide with the restaurants she had discovered. “We stop at one of these charming and highly rated restaurants for a delicious meal around 12:30 p.m., and hopefully have a little leftover for a snack later, and then,” Maye tapped her laptop to show the map route again, “we have our final gas station stop around 3:00 p.m., and arrive at the hotel by 5:00 p.m. And Chris wants to take us to dinner around 7:00 p.m., so this gives us plenty of time to unpack, freshen up, and settle in.” Maye tapped her laptop again to display the final slide that read: “Any Questions?”

“Umm…” Tracy stared at the screen. “A few questions, yeah. When the heck are we supposed to have any fun, Maye? This is a road trip for crying out loud, isn’t it? These are supposed to be spontaneous and free and fun. Not planned down to the gosh-darn minute.”

“My timeframes are very loose and free,” Maye defended.

Tracy leaned forward on the couch and lowered her voice. “Let me break this down for you very clearly, Maye. I need a rest stop at least every seventy-five to ninety minutes. Gas, you top off as you go. Snacks and bevvies flow freely as you are constantly on the lookout for gas station surprises. I push my body to the consumption limits on the road, Maye, and it knows that. If we’re not creating an a-la-carte lunch from the aisles of the gas station markets, then I want a place that TripAdvisor doesn’t even know about. Heck, I’ve been known to drive off course to find a family barbecue I can crash. I still send birthday cards to the Vollmer family in Missouri. It feels like they’re adding a kid every other year. Must be something in the water out there. Now, I don’t want to be crass, because it seems like you’ve done a lot of work and I know you’re in a vulnerable place with the breakup and all, but this agenda is trash. This is not how you road trip. As your Christmas Cousin, the sherpa to your holiday merriment, I cannot, in good conscience approve this plan. It’s for your own good, Maye.”

Maye gulped. She was lost for words. She knew Tracy loved the spontaneous nature of a road trip, but she expected just a little bit of excitement around this plan. She slowly closed her laptop and sat quietly for a moment.

“Well,” Maye began, “that was a completely humbling experience.”

“I’m sorry, Maye,” Tracy said. “I am not trying to be mean, I just—”

“No,” Maye cut her off. “You’re right. I’m stuck in my old ways in a lot of things.”

“This is why you have me as your Christmas Cousin. Now let’s watch something fun,” Tracy grabbed the TV remote and began flipping through channels.

Being stuck on her road trip agenda was not an option anymore for Maye. She wanted to grow as a person and practice acceptance, so she quietly decided to scrap her original plan and go with the flow. “Okay, how about this?” she said. “I can back off the planned stops, but I still want to map out the best possible gas station stops. And I’ll be chill about it.”

“That’s fair,” Tracy said. “Oh look, Chris’s movie, A Season for Acceptance, is on.”

What are the odds? Maye thought.

- 16 -

Packing

As Acceptance week came to a close, it seemed fitting that Maye was packing for a trip of her own. It was a way to symbolize the end of one season of her life and usher herself ‌over the threshold of whatever was next. Plus, she had a jam-packed few days of appointments that she needed to cram into her schedule before she left for Halifax, so she would not have the time nor the patience to pack on the Monday or Tuesday before she left Wednesday.

Tracy arrived with some bubbly under the guise of helping Maye pack, and promptly filled two large wine glasses and sprawled across Maye’s bed while Maye dug through the clothes in her closet.

“Is it weird at all,” Tracy said, “to be packing when the last time you saw Randall he was packing?”

“Not really,” Maye said from the back of her closet, shoving items out of the way to get to other items.

“Hey, what’s that?” Tracy lifted herself up while trying to balance her wine glass. “Are these all his clothes?”

“Yeah,” Maye popped her head out. “I shoved everything into closets to get it all out of sight.”

Tracy got a mischievous look in her eye. “What if…” she kneeled on the ground next to Maye. “What if we defenestrate and berate these clothes, minus the berate?”

“You want to throw all his stuff out the window?”

“You deserve your iconic breakup moment.”

Maye considered this while looking at his clothes on her floor. “I don’t know,” she said. “That was, like, a month ago. Actually, almost exactly one month ago.”

“So it could be your one-month celebration.”

“I don’t think I want to get into the habit of celebrating the number of months since I was dumped.”

“Okay, I get that. What if…” Tracy paused, and then her eyes lit up. “What if we have a Thelma & Louise moment while driving down the highway and throw all his clothes out the sunroof!”

“Ooh, actually…” This sparked an idea for Maye. “I don’t know about throwing all his clothes out the window and littering all over the highway, but we could do a ceremony of sorts to get rid of his stuff somewhere along the way. It could be a real symbolic moment of closure for me.”

“Yeah, and you make lots of extra room in your closet.”

“Right. Of course,” Maye nodded. “Closure, clarity, and closet space.”