30 tiny moments: day 16
Next month my little family and I will be moving back home. We want our daughter to know her grandparents and that requires living close enough to make visiting realistic. Three-thousand miles is just too far to make frequent travel a possibility.
I grew up 750 miles away from my grandparents, a twelve-hour drive that my family made at least once a year.
Without a mini-van.
Without DVDs.
Without Gameboys.
Without “kid’s music”.
Without frequent bathroom stops or a night in a hotel.
And usually without seat-belts. (Once my older brother and I spent the entire 750 miles curled up in sleeping bags in the back of my dad’s truck. When it started raining, he was kind enough to buy us a tarp. That adventure was truly a highlight of my childhood, but now as a parent it horrifies me.)
Lack of technology notwithstanding, there were still plenty of ways to pass the long, long time in the car.
My brothers and I ate lots of candy and drank sodas (but we called it pop), purchased at 7-11s and truck stops along the way.
We read books, colored, and played the license plate game.
We made pillow beds in the car and napped. I usually ended up trying to negotiate a comfortable rest with the hump on the backseat floor.
And when those things got tiresome, we fought.
It was a long twelve hours. But exciting too, for at the end of the trip lived both sets of grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and hours of fun.
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