Friday, August 14, 2009
Sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned, and that can sometimes be the stuff of the fondest and funniest of memories. So when on August 14, 2009, the Bradlees got a two-hour late start from Reading, Massachusetts for Charleston, South Carolina, the tone for the day was set.
With three children sitting in the packed car in the driveway patiently waiting while Gardner and I ran about doing all those last minute things, the
excitement—and underlying worry was huge. We closed up the house and yard, we set the alarm, checked and re-checked things we’d already checked--you know, all those OCD tendencies we all occasionally get as we prep a house for a 10-day departure. Backing out of the driveway, we tried not to think of things we’d forgotten, tried to remember what we’d remembered, and went over our once-over last-time checklist of retainers, inhalers, contact lenses, eyeglasses, portable DVD player, portable satellite radio, cameras of varying sizes and types, phones and iPods of varying colors, chargers of varying shapes, and laptops of varying brands. Could we live without lifelines like Facebook and email for the week? Apparently not.
Our worries were traffic, time, and Gardner’s ability to handle bad drivers . . . or ANY drivers. Our excitement was wrapped up in taking a LONG road trip for the first time in three summers. There’s something delightfully cozy in the six of us being forced to cohabitate for hours on end in the claustrophobia of a moving capsule. I was curious to see how relationship skills had developed in my children (and in myself!) and in their ability to get along since our last journey. After all, kids ages 15, 12 and 7 are quite different from kids ages 12, 9, and 4.
So if you’re really paying attention to this blog, you’ll notice I mention in aforementioned text that there were indeed six of us in this moving capsule. Nah, it’s not what you’re thinking. Three’s enough, trust me. With the installation the night before of a brand new GPS system in our car, we suddenly had a new family remember with us whom Quillen affectionately christened “Chives”—a male. Part of the fun in getting to know Chives was determining if he was really a she or if she was a he, and then if we liked his given name, or if his name could be better, or what was more fitting for him. It became the norm that when Quillen was sitting shotgun, there were many personality changes to Chives, a result of Quill’s profuse inability to sit still. When Chives was a German man he was Hans. When Chives became a British woman, we named her Fiona. Then we killed the early hours of the drive determining her counterparts’ nationalities, names, and accents. After running her through the Asian and European language tests, we decided she was best remaining a she and perhaps most helpful for us all if speaking in English. Afterall, who knows where we’d end up if we listened to her directions in Flemish. But English can’t be just English—there’s Australian English, British English, well, you get the point. I requested Southern Drawl English, but I was outta luck. Our schizophrenic GPS, Chives, eventually seemed best understood by Gardner (aka our Captain, oh Captain) as an American woman named Samantha. So my husband came to develop a threateningly close relationship with another woman who affectionately became known as Sam.
Our journey down to our first destination, Chester, Virginia, was filled with nothing but some of the most horrendous traffic I’ve seen in my life—and I’ve seen a LOT of traffic. With top speeds at times no more than 10 or 15 miles per hour, there were stretches of 20 miles of traffic jams. True, Friday was not the best day to begin our expedition as we competed with Jersey Shore-goers and city dwellers escaping the heat from NYC, Baltimore, and DC. In short, our estimated journey of eight hours, turned into a thirteen hour trip. Sam’s presence was enormous as we juggled the nagging questions of whether or not she was in fact being true to us. She re-routed us often and at times even re-routed our re-routes giving us that frustrating sensation that we were chasing out tails. Some of us started to see the humor in much of this (not our Captain, as you can well imagine). We had our traditional, good ol’ fashioned AAA TripTik route, and vintage items called “maps.” But when Sam spoke, we sometimes didn’t listen, tried to outsmart her, and then paid dearly. By the time we got to Baltimore, Gardner determined that Sam had always been right, even in those moments when it felt we were back tracking. It came down to trusting her, our Captain said. Okay, I reluctantly said, feeling a bit jealous of the other woman as I fumbled around in the backseat with the folds and creases of my vintage map. I’m a visual person, remember?
So we pulled in to our hotel in Chester at 9:12 pm, having logged 28 commands from Sam, 17 screams of frustration from our Captain, 10.35 hours of satellite radio, nine text message exchanges with our college pal Marc, eight pee stop requests from Asia, seven outbursts of anger from Asia about the quality of library DVDs, six waters, four granola bars, two doses of Tylenol Cold for Quill’s doozy of a cold, two Capri Sun juice bags, one request for Craisins from Tiff, one viewing of a partial moon by Rowe, one lunch break, one viewing each of High School Musical, Speed, and Flushed Away, one bag of lime chips, one fill-up, one top-off (gasoline, I mean), a partridge in a pear tree, and zero (count ‘em: ZERO) meltdowns from a child.
Two things of note:
1. No meltdowns in a 13-hour car ride (okay, so Captain had a couple) equals maturing kids.
2. When events go unplanned and perhaps not so perfectly, the memory can be even bigger. We had some great laughs, occasionally at Captain’s (or Sam’s) expense, saw license plates from faraway places, and enjoyed amusing exchanges and conversation while stuck in literally miles and hours of traffic.
Goodnight Moon!
Sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned, and that can sometimes be the stuff of the fondest and funniest of memories. So when on August 14, 2009, the Bradlees got a two-hour late start from Reading, Massachusetts for Charleston, South Carolina, the tone for the day was set.
With three children sitting in the packed car in the driveway patiently waiting while Gardner and I ran about doing all those last minute things, the
excitement—and underlying worry was huge. We closed up the house and yard, we set the alarm, checked and re-checked things we’d already checked--you know, all those OCD tendencies we all occasionally get as we prep a house for a 10-day departure. Backing out of the driveway, we tried not to think of things we’d forgotten, tried to remember what we’d remembered, and went over our once-over last-time checklist of retainers, inhalers, contact lenses, eyeglasses, portable DVD player, portable satellite radio, cameras of varying sizes and types, phones and iPods of varying colors, chargers of varying shapes, and laptops of varying brands. Could we live without lifelines like Facebook and email for the week? Apparently not.
Our worries were traffic, time, and Gardner’s ability to handle bad drivers . . . or ANY drivers. Our excitement was wrapped up in taking a LONG road trip for the first time in three summers. There’s something delightfully cozy in the six of us being forced to cohabitate for hours on end in the claustrophobia of a moving capsule. I was curious to see how relationship skills had developed in my children (and in myself!) and in their ability to get along since our last journey. After all, kids ages 15, 12 and 7 are quite different from kids ages 12, 9, and 4.
So if you’re really paying attention to this blog, you’ll notice I mention in aforementioned text that there were indeed six of us in this moving capsule. Nah, it’s not what you’re thinking. Three’s enough, trust me. With the installation the night before of a brand new GPS system in our car, we suddenly had a new family remember with us whom Quillen affectionately christened “Chives”—a male. Part of the fun in getting to know Chives was determining if he was really a she or if she was a he, and then if we liked his given name, or if his name could be better, or what was more fitting for him. It became the norm that when Quillen was sitting shotgun, there were many personality changes to Chives, a result of Quill’s profuse inability to sit still. When Chives was a German man he was Hans. When Chives became a British woman, we named her Fiona. Then we killed the early hours of the drive determining her counterparts’ nationalities, names, and accents. After running her through the Asian and European language tests, we decided she was best remaining a she and perhaps most helpful for us all if speaking in English. Afterall, who knows where we’d end up if we listened to her directions in Flemish. But English can’t be just English—there’s Australian English, British English, well, you get the point. I requested Southern Drawl English, but I was outta luck. Our schizophrenic GPS, Chives, eventually seemed best understood by Gardner (aka our Captain, oh Captain) as an American woman named Samantha. So my husband came to develop a threateningly close relationship with another woman who affectionately became known as Sam.
Our journey down to our first destination, Chester, Virginia, was filled with nothing but some of the most horrendous traffic I’ve seen in my life—and I’ve seen a LOT of traffic. With top speeds at times no more than 10 or 15 miles per hour, there were stretches of 20 miles of traffic jams. True, Friday was not the best day to begin our expedition as we competed with Jersey Shore-goers and city dwellers escaping the heat from NYC, Baltimore, and DC. In short, our estimated journey of eight hours, turned into a thirteen hour trip. Sam’s presence was enormous as we juggled the nagging questions of whether or not she was in fact being true to us. She re-routed us often and at times even re-routed our re-routes giving us that frustrating sensation that we were chasing out tails. Some of us started to see the humor in much of this (not our Captain, as you can well imagine). We had our traditional, good ol’ fashioned AAA TripTik route, and vintage items called “maps.” But when Sam spoke, we sometimes didn’t listen, tried to outsmart her, and then paid dearly. By the time we got to Baltimore, Gardner determined that Sam had always been right, even in those moments when it felt we were back tracking. It came down to trusting her, our Captain said. Okay, I reluctantly said, feeling a bit jealous of the other woman as I fumbled around in the backseat with the folds and creases of my vintage map. I’m a visual person, remember?
So we pulled in to our hotel in Chester at 9:12 pm, having logged 28 commands from Sam, 17 screams of frustration from our Captain, 10.35 hours of satellite radio, nine text message exchanges with our college pal Marc, eight pee stop requests from Asia, seven outbursts of anger from Asia about the quality of library DVDs, six waters, four granola bars, two doses of Tylenol Cold for Quill’s doozy of a cold, two Capri Sun juice bags, one request for Craisins from Tiff, one viewing of a partial moon by Rowe, one lunch break, one viewing each of High School Musical, Speed, and Flushed Away, one bag of lime chips, one fill-up, one top-off (gasoline, I mean), a partridge in a pear tree, and zero (count ‘em: ZERO) meltdowns from a child.
Two things of note:
1. No meltdowns in a 13-hour car ride (okay, so Captain had a couple) equals maturing kids.
2. When events go unplanned and perhaps not so perfectly, the memory can be even bigger. We had some great laughs, occasionally at Captain’s (or Sam’s) expense, saw license plates from faraway places, and enjoyed amusing exchanges and conversation while stuck in literally miles and hours of traffic.
Goodnight Moon!
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