Detroit, MI STOCK PHOTOS

“What did you do to yourself?” That was the greeting I received from my 89-year-old great-aunt after not seeing me for almost four years. It sums up how I have felt about myself, and the renaissance of my beloved home city of Detroit, over the years.

Detroit will always be home, my home. I have too many roots, physical and spiritual, buried deep in the soil of Detroit to disown her. It is a love affair that will never end. I may be a few thousand miles away, but I am still in love and concerned with what is going on in the “D.”

Over the past few years the “D” has received national love from YouTube documentaries or vlogs and television shows. Detroiters love and deserve the attention, but it can get tricky when someone who is not a Detroiter greets you with a “What up Doe?” Nah dog. That is where we must draw a line. Love on my city and respect the “D.” But do not misappropriate that sentiment because it feels good rolling off the tongue. To love Detroit is to love the good, the bad, and the horrible simultaneously. Being a bandwagoner is unacceptable.

My family and I planned this trip to the “D” for almost six months. The last time I visited was back in November 2019. Before that, it had been about two years. When we moved as a family to Florida in 2005, my husband promised he would make sure I traveled home each year. That was a promise he lovingly kept until 2017, when I had a major health scare with congenital heart disease. The following year my back deteriorated rapidly from being in hospital beds for much of the year. My back issues were the result of being seriously injured in a car crash in 2013. This led to major back surgery and rehabilitation.

When I was finally able to visit Detroit in 2019, I had been walking for about four months only with the assistance of a cane. I had never spent that much time away from my family. Of course, all of that would change once the coronavirus pandemic hit and grounded the world to a standstill. When my husband’s paternal side of the family decided to plan a family reunion earlier this year, I called it nothing but perfect timing to go home. With my husband bravely enduring radiation and chemotherapy due to a stage three breast cancer diagnosis last fall, what could possibly lift his spirits to enormous heights more than being surrounded by family?

At first, it took a lot of convincing to get all my children on board with the idea of traveling to Detroit with their sick father for a family reunion. They have been on an emotional rollercoaster for months, joining me in taking care of and supporting their father. But all four of them eventually got on board with traveling home for the Foster Family Reunion. Howard’s radiation ended a week before we hit the road. For financial reasons, we decided a road trip would be the best way to go. Unfortunately, we were mistaken.

We left Tampa on Wednesday, July 12, in the early evening or late afternoon. That was smart because the traffic heading toward Ocala on I-275 was minimum. We were able to reach Valdosta, Ga. in less than three hours.

But the ride was anything but a smooth one. A couple of months before we were scheduled to make the trip, I prepaid the Hertz rental car agency on their website for a large luxury vehicle. I wanted my husband’s ride to be comfortable because of the neuropathy in his legs, hands and feet, the side effects of chemotherapy that our oncologist has suggested may or may not leave after treatment.

Once I arrived at the Wesley Chapel location to pick up the car, however, drama ensued. The Hertz sales associate asked me to put my credit card in the reader, which I quickly did. That was when I was told to use the credit card that I had made the registration with. I said the card I slipped into the credit card reader was the same credit card I had used online.

From that point for the next hour and a half, Hertz’s corporate office and the bank holding my credit card account argued back and forth regarding the connection between the virtual card and the physical card. When I used my card, the bank protected me from identity fraud by way of the virtual card number. All transactions were accounted for, and the rental was indeed paid for. But Hertz acknowledged that they did not have the technology to accept the virtual card in place of the physical card or vice versa.

I cried my eyes out in that office. My son K’aleb was with me, and he had never seen me cry like that in public. Usually, I am clear-headed and composed in the face of trials, but that day I was a mess. I think that I had so much on me emotionally and in a literal sense for so many months that the damn burst. All I knew was that my trip was in jeopardy of not becoming a reality.

When we first planned this trip, the plan was to travel in my SUV which is roomy and very comfortable. Yet my SUV stopped in the middle of traffic in May, and my mechanic said that either the alternator needed to be replaced or it could be an issue with the gas accelerator. Whatever the case, I decided that renting a car would be best for such a long road trip.

Yet there I was at Hertz, bawling. My son suggested we take my husband’s Santa Cruz on the road, rather than the Hertz rental.

“So we loaded up the truck (and my son’s Camry) and headed to the “D.”