Road trips

My daughter, Carrie and I have taken some really good road trips.  From Pennsylvania to Florida, and Maine, twice to Canada, and points in between, we’ve logged many miles replete with companionship, music, and good conversation.  

Most trips found us taking a wrong turn or two with no smart phone to keep us from the error of our ways.  Only one town, Greensboro, NC, tripped us up twice at exactly the same place due to terrible road signage.  Almost as bad was a small town in Georgia outside of Atlanta where the streets by and large had no street name signs.  Then again if you had lived there all your life, you wouldn’t need them.  A way to keep out-of-towners to a minimum, I suppose.  And the ongoing construction (20 years worth) made our lives interesting when driving the interstate through Charlotte, NC.  The beltways around that city have made a vast improvement.

Driving from Greenville, SC to Tampa  FL a few years ago earned the nomination for best driving experience.  The weather was delightful, traffic flowed smoothly, and there were no delays due to construction.  The trip through Maine to Quebec would qualify for second place.  A highlight of that trip was a stop at a family-owned motel.  The check-in “lobby” was a large room attached to their home.  The walls were lined with taxidermied animal heads of all kinds and the couch and easy chairs were covered in pelts.  Whatever one’s view of hunting, the chance to feel the soft luxurious pelt of an arctic silver fox was amazing.

The most memorable road trip without question was the one taken in 2007 with a family visiting us from Russia, a dad, mom and three children.  Carrie and I were their transportation to Orlando where ex-pat Russian friends had a time share week.  After dropping them off, we spent our time in Tampa with family.  On the return trip, we were forced to stop in South Carolina on our way back due to a violent thunderstorm with possibility of tornadoes, but found a nice restaurant with a TV tuned to the weather news in which to wait out the storm.  But what made the trip one for the record books was listening to the family playing Uno in Russian for the better part of 2000+ miles.  And though I learned to recognize the numbers one through nine in Russian, my favorite remains the number four.

It managed to still sound lyrical, even after hearing it hundreds and hundreds of times.

I wish...

As a child, my wishes ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime.  I wished I had gotten the Chatty Cathy with the blue dress for Christmas instead of the one I got with the red dress.  I wished I fit in better at school instead of being quite so free-spirited.  (I mean, what other sixth grader brought knitting to do at recess?)   

 In junior high, I wished my new loafers were prettier.  I wished I had more control over my sweet tooth, especially with a penny candy store right across the street from the junior high school.  (Maybe it was an occupational hazard that came with the name Candy.)  I wished my best friend lived closer to me.

In high school I wished I could solve the world’s problems or at least those of my friends as I usually choose to befriend those on the fringes rather than the “in” crowd.  I wished that popular girl sitting kitty-corner from me in Creative Writing class didn’t sneer at me quite so openly.  I wished my Spanish teachers were better at teaching Spanish.

As a wife and mother of four, I wished I could be a better housekeeper like “S”, that I could decorate my home as effortlessly as “B”, that I could be as organized as “M”.  I wished I could be as charming as “R”, have the joyful abandon of “N”, play the piano like “J”, sing like “M” and be as adaptable as “L”.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

If turnips were watches, I'd wear one by my side.

If "if's" and "and's" were pots and pans,

There'd be no work for tinkers' hands.

Thankfully, the Lord has been teaching me more and more about who He is and who He has made me to be.  Contentment with who I am--and my less than “perfectness”—is still a work in process.  I still catch myself wishing for things from the ridiculous to the sublime.

And I wish I hadn’t forgotten to put away the ham and bean soup last night.  Some of the best bean soup Barry has ever made had to be consigned to the compost pile.