Last week I found myself driving down the interstate, with both of my kids (sleeping) in the car, crying like a baby. I had spent Easter Week (better known as Spring Break 2010) on a road trip with my seventeen year old daughter and my two month old son. I know what you're thinking, that alone is enough to make anyone cry but that wasn't why I was crying. It had been an emotional week for me anyway. Visiting my family does that to me. Add to that my son was not fond of the long distance travel, so our trip times were doubled to better accommodate him and don't forget to throw in some post-pregnancy hormones. But all of that didn't bother me as much as thinking about the fact that this would be the last road trip Allyssa and I will take together before she finishes high school and starts a new chapter in her life.
Road trips have long been a tradition for my daughter and I. They used to be out of necessity, since I was a single mother and too broke to fly but now that we have become accustomed to them - we can't wait to take them! We have MANY road trip memories. Some good... Making the cashier at a drive-thru in Kentucky laugh out loud when we pulled up to the window and I had attached a car air freshener to my ear and acted like nothing was out of the ordinary. The MANY times that Allyssa would do "research" on the road trying to determine how many people would wave at a little girl who waved at them first and if the color of ones car had any bearing on their propensity to wave back. The time when she wrote "SMILE" in big letters and put it on the window every time we passed a car and the routine concerts that we would put on for each other as we made the drive to wherever it was we were going. I can see my daughter now... seven or eight years old... Singing her heart out to Shania Twain, country twang and all and asking me in earnest if she did indeed sound like Shania.
And some bad... Being stuck on the side of I-24 for six hours with hundreds of other stranded travelers during a snow storm, subsequently having to stay in a bed and breakfast that Allyssa will tell you was haunted. Traveling to and from with very little money and no room for any kind of incident only to have my car break down somewhere in the middle of Tennessee leaving me with a hotel bill and a car repair of $500+.
We've come a long way since those first few road trips. For one, now I have another driver and sometimes we stay in a hotel on purpose. My daughter has developed her own taste in music and an incredible sense of humor. She's gone from a gapped tooth six year old to a beautiful young adult. She has gone from needing help cleaning her room to volunteering to clean rooms at The Ronald McDonald House and completing a service mission trip in Costa Rica. I went from a young single mom with three jobs to a married mother of two who often wonders how we ever made it the two of us. Somehow, (by an act of God) I managed to raise a moderately normal kid with a great personality and a sense responsibility to the world around her.
Raising Allyssa on my own for the first 15 years was a lot like one long road trip. We've seen a lot of cool things, we've been through some bad traffic but as I looked over at my sweet and amazing daughter sleeping through the last leg of our road trip I knew the journey truly has been the reward! Good Lord I love that child!
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