Twenty nine years ago, Craig and Becky were both working for Conoco.   They are both engineers.  Craig a Chemical, and Becky an Industrial.  Craig was assigned to Paris, so they were living there.  Her oldest son Steven was eighteen months and she was almost eight months pregnant.  I was teaching at the college in Miami, Okla. and fall break was coming up.  I got a call from Becky.

"Mom, go get your passport and come to Paris.  I've got your ticket."  I answered, "I don't fly.  I am afraid to fly.  Your dad flies, I don't.  I don't want to come to Paris."  Then she said the operative words for a mother:  "I need you."  Followed by, "I want to come back to the states to have this baby, and if I wait until Craig is finished here the airline won't let me board because I will be too close to term.  I can't fly back by myself.  I need you to hold Steven on the flight back.  I don't have a lap anymore."

So I got my passport, and flew to Paris, France.  Gritting my teeth.  I survived.  It was wonderful.  I stayed with them a week sleeping on the sofa in a two room walk up at night and "doing" Paris with Becky each day.  We left Craig there at the end of the week and flew back to the USA.

And during the years afterward, when her boys were six or seven or so, every time Becky went overseas to work, she would get me a ticket and we would take one of the boys so that they could experience Europe and have someone to entertain them while she worked.  I especially remember one trip.  We were in Grimsby, England.  Up on the North Shore.  She had taken a team with her,  and every day they would go to some oil rig--or something or other--and drop Steven and me off at a little train depot.  The two of us would head West on the train to York, change trains and go North or South, and hop a train back and meet the team for late supper, (Which was fantastic--I can still remember every meal.  I asked the cook if  he would go back to Oklahoma with us.)

More than once, Steven and I would spend the day in York at the York Cathedral.  It is a marvelous place.  During the war, they removed the stained glass windows (there were many, many, many windows) and buried them during the bombing of England so that if the Cathedral was hit, they could maybe restore it--and have the stained glass.  I am so glad that I had those experiences discovering Europe with her boys.  Becky gave me that opportunity, which was a blessing.