when we were little, road trips were almost always to see a grandma/grandpa/mami/papi and meant powdered sugar donuts and orange juice consumed from paper cups at an interstate rest stop. that is the taste of adventure and anticipation to me, those puffy white bites of cake that coated your tongue and got all down the front of your shirt.
grown up me and my husband are stalwart drivers-to-grandmas, too. we're fifteen hours away and road trips look a little different from this side of the front seat/back seat line, I'll admit. there is the packing and loading, the deciding when to leave (late so the kids will sleep, or early so we won't?), the arrangements for plants watered and packages collected in our absence from home. but then we start up the car and head out for our other homes, for mamas and papas and brothers and sisters and old friends and now--nieces and nephews and cousins! and that right there brings back all the good feelings of eagerness and possibility and just generally happy childlike contentment. we are going on a trip!
and we get thirty minutes down the highway and the first kid needs to go pee.
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I've wondered lots about the "right" way to do a road trip. it's definitely one of those events that seems to act like a sorting hat for parenting styles and social affiliations. back when we bought our minivan as new parents-of-two, we decided against the built-in DVD players. it may have been a fit of sanctimonious crunchy-mom insanity--the auto salesman certainly thought so--but really, we haven't missed them (mostly not, anyhow) and we've gotten to listen to tons of good audiobooks in the meantime. we talk lots, and we've been blessed with plenty of what must surely be character-building squabbles, too. on the other hand, we've allowed the boys some game time on parents' phones the last few trips and that hasn't been so bad, either. fifteen hours is a long time and probably kids who have dvds in the car are just as well adjusted as ours, and even more versant in interesting film topics. but at the time, way back when we were new to parenting and full to the brim with ideals, we made a no-movies call, and we've stuck to it. principle, folks.
this trip, I was despairing about the junk food that makes its way into the car at every gas station. we gave in to a pack of candy for the kids years ago, mostly because we were already loading our own cup holders with starbursts and gummy bears in an effort to stay awake on long stretches of barren interstate. somehow, though, we greenlighted a cherry Icee in the final, most strained hours of our journey home last week. as Elliott dove in to it, I panicked about Red 40 and corn syrup and ADHD and cancer and all the rest. I mentally laid down the law about how all future road trips would be bento boxes of homemade veggie rolls and tiny cubes of bean curd. we'd find a cow on the side of the road and milk it, by god, before we bought another ounce of tooth-rotting candy or soda in sheep's clothing. (because of course we already stick to a no-soda rule. duh. (most of the time, anyway.))
oh, it's hard, this parenting thing. the older I get, the more I realize that kind of food just doesn't make me feel good. not for long, anyway. and I really do wonder about how it impacts behavior and resilience, let alone long term health. but then I remember being small, and the powdery white donuts--special food for a special time--and I remember, too, the months after fifth grade when we moved to a new house and didn't have a washer at home, and choosing a roll of SweetTarts at the convenience store next to the Laundromat. SweetTarts were the educated choice, because you could suck them slowly and make them last the entire wash cycle and most of the dry. Which is the same thing I do now with candy on a road trip--suck it slow, make it last, roll it around your mouth and watch the miles drop away.
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We did find a cow on the trip, out back of a gas station where we had to stop for the bathroom a few miles after we'd just stopped for lunch. Owen would have stood there for hours, petting it and trying to feed it bits of grass through the fence. That is something I will remember.
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I probably won't outlaw candy. Maybe I'll make some good granola and try to sell that hard first. But no more g-d Icees. I mean it.
see deb's work at the county fair for a reminder that junk food is beautiful.
and andrea's, because so are road trips.
