Gracias, los padres!!!

I was just reminded about our family trips to Tijuana years ago. From what I have recently heard, there is a lot of violence going on there now, and I am glad we were able to go to other countries when we were kids, and places were safer.

Every other year for Christmas we we visited our Tigner grandparents and Dad's sister, Aunt
Virginia in San Diego. We enjoyed being so close to the ocean and in a place that was not so cold as was Sacramento at that time of the year. Grandma Tigner was never glad to have us children under foot for a few days. She had a dressmaking and alterations business in her home, and although she was always glad to see us, we always very quickly got the idea that we were to be seen but not heard, and that we needed to get out of her way!! We would have Christmas there and stay a few days before we returned home.

We would go to Tijuana on some of those visits, just to buy Mom a new purse. We listened and watched as Dad haggled with the salesman. It was always in a tiny stall-type store that we found what Mom wanted. Those beautiful leather-worked purses with the long straps were perfect for Mom--she loved them. Dad would haggle the price down into the forty to forty-five dollar range and then purchase the purse. We would then return to San Diego.

For me it was always frightening to be in a country other than the U.S.A. And when we went to live two years in Casablanca, Morocco, it took awhile for me to overcome my anxieties about the different laws in another country. I was so glad when we returned home!! Years later, when I was in the U.S. Army, I was stationed in Germany. At the time I was not so excited about this, but now I am glad I had to live on-post in the barracks. We lived mostly under U.S. law. It was when we went off-base to go to church or to go on an adventure that we had to be concerned about West German laws and how they might affect what we were doing. It was the same a few years ago when Claudia's mother paid for all her children and their spouses to go to Santo Domingo. In fact, I was more frightened then than I ever had been in any other country. I felt like you never knew if you were safe.

I think I would still enjoy any opportunities to go abroad, but I have learned over and over again that the good old U.S.A. feels safer than any other country and that we have more freedoms here than anywhere else. I am so thankful for those who fought and died that we might have these wonderful freedoms!!