A Road Trip With Middlest is a Trip

This past week, Middlest and I went on a four and a half hour road trip to visit a college she is interested in attending. I am not sure what all of her criteria for choosing a college are, but I think one of the criteria for visiting this college was that it was far enough away from home so Mom and Dad wouldn’t be “all up in” her business, yet close enough so Mom and Dad could drive to get her for breaks on a regular basis.

The drive was long but enjoyable. Middlest shared her music with me, and we were able to jam out as the miles passed. I wish I could tell you that we engaged in deep personal conversation, but we are both content to simply sit and be together. In fact, Middlest has never been one of those touchy-feely emotional people. When I would pick her up from pre-school, all the other children would run up and give their mothers or fathers a long hug. Middlest, on the other hand, would zero in on me from across the room, paw her foot on the ground a couple times, and with a wild gleam in her eye, she would charge full speed across the room, and slam her head into my stomach. Yes, while other parents were the recipients of loving and tender hugs, I would get a head butt to the gut.

Middlest has also developed a sarcastic and somewhat irreverent outlook on life. This, in fact, makes time with her even more enjoyable. When we left the house at five in the morning, it was dark and there was not much to see. As we travelled on, the sun began to rise, as it does every morning, and we could see the country side around us. Every time we saw something noteworthy I would say to Middlest, “Quick, take a picture.” This is quite easy to say, but very difficult to carry out when travelling down the highway at 65 mph. Consequently, we missed taking pictures of the fog wisping its way across the fields dotted with bales of hay, we missed capturing the pair of six point bucks munching on dew covered grass by the edge of the road, and we missed multiple chances to take a picture of the lovely sunrise.

That is until we reached one of our favorite rest stops along the highway. The actual rest stop sits in the median, and travelers heading either direction park their cars and walk on an enclosed bridge to the facilities and restaurants in the building in the middle of the lanes of traffic. As we were heading back to our car, I stopped and was finally able to snap a picture of the sun as it hovered above the highway. As Middlest and I enjoyed the scene, a truck driver ambled by and commented, “That’s not something you see every day.”  Middlest and I just looked at each other, fighting the desire to make snarky comments like, “If the sun didn’t come up every day, we would all be DEAD!” or, “Where are you from that the sun doesn’t come up every day?” But, we politely restrained ourselves. The driver, as it turns out, was talking about the bridges across the road and not the sun rise at all.