eighteen hundred miles to happiness

Having just driven eighteen hundred miles roundtrip from Georgia to Wisconsin in a minivan with over two hundred thousand miles on the odometer and three rowdy school-aged kids in the backseat, (whew) I have decided to reflect on how we pull it off each year and why we continue to make that trip several times each year.

 A week before this year’s annual 4^th of July trip to see our family in Wisconsin I was mentally running through our packing list. Having taken this trip for the past thirteen years, you would think that I could pack with my eyes closed. Nope. I am continually amazed at how my packing list has morphed as twins were added to the trip, than a screaming baby daughter that hated every car ride – let alone a nine hundred mile one. I fondly recall the years before children that I would pack a bag of magazines, books, maybe my knitting needles, and a few crossword puzzles to distract me from the highway miles. In contrast, this year I spent an entire afternoon packing crayons, paper dolls, drawing pads and princess paraphernalia for my daughter, along with half a dozen new chapter books, an old fashion Star Wars video game box, my Kindle (newly loaded with Angry Birds), and four stuffed animals each for my eight-year-old boys.  

Never mind the backpack that each child packed secretly with things they felt they could not survive the week without.

 In case of quiet, rainy days I also pack a few favorite board games and (sigh) a new, unopened box of Legos. That was my husband sighing, by the way. He feels that the 5,768 Lego bricks that we already own should be sufficient enough to pack for a Wisconsin rainy day. I disagree. As a Lego aficionado myself, and cohabitating with two brainy eight-year-old boys who love the first assembly process almost as much as I do, a new Lego set at each of our vacation destinations usually turns out to be my favorite souvenir. I may be a middle-aged mother, but somewhere hidden beneath the newly developing wrinkles and insatiable thirst for coffee, a kid still resides.  

So the minivan is loaded up with every essential, and three extra backpacks. Our five bodies are stuffed like sardines next to suitcases, laptops, Coleman coolers, and pillows. We drive the first five hundred miles without incidence, other than the potty stops every forty five minutes for Daddy. Too much caffeine in one hit and that man leaks. We make it to Louisville, Kentucky which is our half-way mark, and we begin looking for a hotel.

 Let me first say what is obvious: children can be…let’s say, difficult to please. The wrong color of a lollipop, the wrong presentation of a sandwich, jeans with buttons instead of snaps – these are all things that can drive a kid insane and a parent to contemplate just how early in the day a glass of wine is deemed inappropriate. This fickleness does not apply to hotels, however. Just about any hotel on this planet is deemed awesome by the under twelve set. As long as there is an elevator and a free continental breakfast with one of those waffle makers that you get to flip over and wait for the beep, my kids are ecstatic. Add to the equation their mother’s promise that hotel beds are meant to be jumped on, and my children think they have died and gone to Heaven when we pull into Fairfield Inn.

After a wonderfully comfortable night in a bed with more pillows than I currently own in my entire home, and a morning where everyone wants to shower because it is a different and “neater” shower than ours, we resume our journey having Wisconsin on the brain. Mommy is in the driver seat with her cup of coffee, while Daddy is already nodding off again in the passenger seat. This is when things get unfair. As the driver, navigator, and ultimate authority in the vehicle, I really want to listen to a new Kenny Chesney CD that we purchased for the trip. The pipsqueaks in the back row, however, want to watch Spiderman on the DVD player. Upon hearing this, my husband awakens enough to haul his two hundred plus body into the backseat to watch it with them (while Mom gets to listen to Spiderman for the next two hundred miles.) A bag of M&M’s purchased by the grumpy mother in the driver’s seat seems to bring some comfort - until the backseat notices the M&M’s and requests the bag be sent back, never to be seen again. (sigh)

 That bag of M&Ms could be an entire blog by itself by the way, discussing the various methods of finding comfort midst the chaos that is Having Kids. (Use the COMMENT BOX to share your own comforts or let me know if you are interested in hearing mine in a future post.)

 The last two hundred miles of our trip take us up through the beautiful Windy City. Our somewhat unreliable GPS thinks we want to be Chicago tourists so we wind up ridiculously close to the heart of downtown, ambling along at 5mph on the expressway. Trust me, I do not miss the irony.  Lovely.

After having a five minute temper tantrum about something none of us can pin down, my daughter finishes her outburst and falls into a blissful sleep while the rest of us mend our bleeding ears for a bit. I am still driving due to my touch of motion sickness being exceptionally bad this trip when my hubby is behind the wheel. So I have not picked up a book, magazine, or even my laptop for the entire trip.

As we approach the Wisconsin state line, the excitement mounts. The boys are waiting to see the “Welcome to Wisconsin” sign they have come to recognize. Each of us begins to wonder what our destination will look like. No snow on the ground this time of year, but corn and soybean fields will dominate the landscape. Who will be there to greet us at Nana and Papa’s house? Will the cousins be coming? Will Papa have the waterslide up? Will Nana cook us the world’s best cheesy eggs? The underlying thought, the unspoken inquiry is will we have the kind of fun that makes this nutty drive worth it?

Our trip this year really did go off without a hitch. I remember last year when we were three hundred miles into our trip when my son Blake discovered that he was not wearing shoes. Nor did his mother think to pack extras. So a run to Famous Footwear was plugged into our detour feature on the navigation system. That was not as traumatic as our pathetically dying car battery in 2009, the flat in the middle of the night (God help us, on an interstate) in 2010. And thank goodness we have only experienced one Christmas blizzard where Kentucky closed down I-24, forcing us to spend a night in what has been called my Bate’s Motel. Picture a full-sized bed with twin one-year-olds tucked between their mother and father in a room with a broken room heater. We slept in our coats, our hats and our mittens. I remember crying on the toilet seat because I was: So. Damn. Cold. Relatively speaking, this trip was akin to a cruise to the Bahamas.

We do this drive at least twice each year. We do it rain or shine, through snow or ice, come hell or high water. Why? So our children get to see their grandparents while they share lives on this great earth. So they get to play with abandon surrounded by cousins. We do it to touch in with our own parents, our siblings, our dear childhood friends. We may live in a different time zone, and Brandon and I may get so carried away with our own life’s responsibilities for 50 weeks out of the year that we forget to call or forget to send birthday cards to those we love. But we budget, schedule and scheme to make it up to Wisconsin to see them.

My dear sister opens her home to us, knowing full well the chaos we will bring. A couple of my sister-in-laws make countless trips to our old hometown just to see us for the little bit of time that we are there. Parents accommodate our diet preferences, clean their homes for our arrival, and have been known to sit up into the wee hours of the night to greet us upon our arrival. An old friend adjusts his own travel plans so that we might see his little baby girl. Another friend opens up his lake home to us so that our kids might experience their first time tubing.

There are other friends and family members that we did not get to see this trip. Each knows, however, that they are on our short list when the holiday rolls around and we do this all again. We make this trip for so many reasons. We want our children to know how important family is. Through thick or thin, rain or shine, family comes first. We also want them to know what cornfields, ski hills, and trout fishing looks like. This is why we do it. And this is why we leave December 23^rd to do it all again.