Epic Journey 2011

I like this picture because it is just as blurry as how I remember that first evening. We left around 5pm or so. Was it 5pm? It was raining. It wasn’t just a little, soft rain. It was the kind of rain that soaks you before you get in the car in your own driveway.

The kids and I were unusually ready for this trip. They have become helpful in a real way. They have always “helped” as little kids like to “help.” That kind of “help” makes mothers lose their mind. They are beginning to actually get the point. I realized this the morning we were leaving.

“Wear what you want to wear in the car,” I told them in my usual way. Gladys likes to dress appropriately. She asked me what she should wear today. She replied just as matter-of-factly as I spoke.

“Will I be wearing this for the next two or three days?”

“Maybe,” I answered back.

“Okay, Mommy.”

They remember. They remember different details than we do. Will they remember that for 23 days their parents put away the cell phones? What will they remember?

Dreams of the Open Road

I wake slowly from my long summer dreams,
My thoughts still wand’ring down the open road,
Merely two weeks since our return it seems,
Two thousand mornings since those red rocks glowed.
My mem’ries collect into this small ode.

Twelve thousand miles on an edu-vacation,
Our family adopted the traveling mode,
We stopped at every Ranger Station,
Hot springs and canyons our children we showed,
No hesitation to go off the road.

Our journeys took us to locations where,
We saw the mem’ries of where water flowed,
And when the rain threatened us to fill the air,
The beautiful desert became land forbode,
We scurried quickly to that well-paved road.

We drove through vibrant towns left in despair,
Empty shells of cars, last century towed,
Left outside to rust no one seemed to care,
I cared often to find a clean commode.
We found Route 66 – the Mother Road.

We send our kids off now to school with walls,
They must learn to read and write and follow code,
But as they follow those straight, narrow halls,
They dream of mountain meadows never mowed,
Their mind’s eyes made rich from the open road.

Hold close your babies, let the big ones free,
Imagine rain puddle tadpoles grown into toads.
They must get dirty before we can see
One day we reap from what we sowed,
The dreams made real along life’s open road.


I welcome September, knowing that not a single moment of summer with my children (and husband too) was squandered. And yet, while one might say that the children need to read and write - I have found that reading and writing is a very basic need in my life as well.

I am glad to be back.