Navigating A Road Trip - Part One
Last summer was about saving my life. This summer is definitely about savoring my life. I remember telling myself last year that I would ‘make up’ for what I felt I missed out on next summer. I dreamed about taking a road trip through California and quite frankly I was tired of thinking about it. This was the year. My husband didn’t think any part of ‘road trip’ through summer was fun, so we invited my daughter's boyfriend to join us for a few days. This does several things :
A. My daughter is much happier.
B. My son, also has some male friendship and
C. There is considerable less fighting between all of us.
There is a down side to this- do you remember being 17 and having your boyfriend around your parents? There are bound to be embarrassing moments. I was terrified of embarrassing my kids and paying dearly for therapy sessions in their later years that would 'scar them for life.'
I can do this. It’s a straight shot on the highway. I have been to LA before- I’ve driven in big cities. No worries.
There are certain instances that make me a Nostalgic Sap- like the exciting feeling of going on a road trip. Leaving early, cooler packed with snacks. Or like when I told the kids “This map has traveled around the country for the last 15 years. “ Hmmm. . . Think about that for a minute . . . what I have here is an extremely outdated map.
Life is good until we hit an accident on the highway and miss our exit to Newport Beach. After some time, I start seeing signs to Temecula and I remember thinking “ Wow- Temecula is so far away from everything else .” Looking at the map ( an updated one this time from the gas station) we figured we were a solid 1 ½ in the opposite direction. Terrifed my kids were going to blow up and angrily ask “ What were you thinking.” They just looked at each other and being teenagers, blurted “Blowhole!”
Never hearing this term before – I double over in laughter. Laughing of course breaks the tension and back on the road we go.
A few things were blatantly obvious to me thus far:
1. My husband, became so good at taking care of things the past year that it was much easier to let him do it ( i.e navigating a map )
2. Map skills are a highly valuable skill. - Even in the age of downloading maps to your phone.
3. My ability to deal with stressful situations had increasingly diminished.
My third point makes sense due to fluxuating hormones and mental stress levels. This is part of life after cancer or maybe this is life with 3 teenagers in a car on one Mother Load Road Trip.
I was uncomfortable in every sense of the word. I started to question my road trip decision. My gut feeling told me there was something to be learned from this scenario. I certainly had no other choice but to focus on the problem at hand. I had no choice but to be 'in the moment' for better or worse, there is something to be said about that.
A good old candy store saved the day when we found buckets of salt water taffy. We end the day huddled together with our gummy artificial flavored wads of sugar and watch “ I Love You , Man “ which turns out to be very funny and ‘full of fodder for future conversations” as Chelsea puts it.
Getting lost seemed very far away.
Posted by Angellah at 7/27/2009 3:19 PM 
Categories: Summer Road Trip,Life After Cancer
Tags: Life after cancer
Categories: Summer Road Trip,Life After Cancer
Tags: Life after cancer
I forgot to mention I will be updating the rest of our trip tomorrow - gotta break it into parts. Slightly overwhelming to do the whole thing at once
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