I am a bit leery of her driving 15 hours by herself so I am flying to the Windy City and driving back as her wing man. We plan on stopping in Knoxville for the evening and then plugging into Augusta the next day. I am really excited about spending time with her as she is much brighter than I, and she always teaches me something interesting. For example, did you know that henna tattoos date back to the Roman Empire? They were used as makeup, decoration and to advertise fertility and availability. Today we simply use Facebook. Anyway, she is majoring in journalism and theatre, basically unemployable professions, but she will be very well spoken and confident. Actually I am envious of her choices as I would love to have had a better college experience. She is going to London and Florence, while I went to a windowless lab at the basement of the biology building. I've often said that true happiness is knowing that your kids are following their passion. Well, I should be ecstatic then.
It's a 14 hour drive that will take us through Indianapolis,Cincinnati, and Lexington before arriving in Knoxville for the evening. I went to high school and college in Knoxville so it will be special to share that with her. She will get to see where I walked 10 miles through the snow barefooted to get to school and visit my house where we went to the bathroom outside until I was thirteen. Of course none of that is true, but she has to understand how good she has it by me fantasizing about had bad I had it. Actually Knoxville was a wonderful place to grow up and my middle class, non abusive upbringing was about as free from trauma as an episode of Leave It To Beaver. But I do feel a certain obligation to embellish a bit if it leads to a greater appreciation of my offspring's fortunate station in life.
My daughter is like me in many ways. We are both introverts and would choose a good Grisham novel over a cocktail party. I mentioned to my wife the other day that I was loading my iPhone with podcasts to listen to on the trip. She immediately chastised me stating that I should not listen to anything at all and spend the entire 14 hours engaged in meaningful dialogue with my daughter. My wife is an extravert if you couldn't tell. She sees this as an amazing opportunity to quiz, interrogate, and otherwise hassle my daughter with the sole purpose of bonding. I honor and respect her opinion as she is right in most everything, but in this situation she is horribly misguided. Both my daughter and I also see this as a bonding experience but one that is cemented in silence with the occasional burst of conversation. This is antithetical to everything extraverted, as their idea of hell is more than 10 minutes of silence. When my wife is out of town and I am not at work, I can go days without uttering a word. My eldest is much the same.
My daughter has made this trip with her mother before, so I will be interested in her perception of the contrast. It's not that we won't talk, it's just that we won't talk about drivel and silly things. When we do converse, I suspect it will be meaningful and fascinating, something along the lines of where to eat or which Stop and Shop has the cleanest bathrooms. I get giddy at the thought of it. I do think we will have a grand time, just in our own introverted way.
We probably won’t have to worry about directions on the way home. We now have fourteen different devices to guide and confuse us. We have a Garmin, a Tom Tom, Mapquest, OnStar, iPhone App, and an ancient document called a road map. I find it is telling that if any of the digital directors disagree I always go back to the US Road Atlas from 2000. It’s never led me astray whereas that dang English accented woman from the Garmin has sent me down a number of rabbit holes. The iPhone App is great as long as you are in a service area and you don’t have a finger tremor. Have you ever tried to follow the route if there is the least bit of shake in your fingertip? All of the sudden you are looking at a map of Sudan. I can shake all I want and my Atlas still points me to home.
Maybe I’ll just let my daughter guide us while I withdraw into my introverted cone of silence.
