Time

For the holidays, I spent some time taking a road trip to the midwest to see family. I'm lucky to have my mom living with me, but my brother lives in Illinois and my father in Michigan so I don't get to see them very often. Generally, I've avoided traveling during the winter, due to potential vagaries of the weather, but this year we got a new 4-wheel-drive car and I thought we'd give it a try.

I knew Lucy would jump at the opportunity to visit her other son, but I was rather surprised that both of the boys wanted to come too. We left as soon as Charlie was done with finals, although he worked on a paper in the car as we drove there and finished it the morning after we arrived.

In my youth, I tended to drive straight through when I had a long drive. When I worked for MobileEd I occasionally had long drives between engagements: once I did a show in Toledo one day and was in Red Bank, New Jersey the next: I drove all night and arrived just in time for breakfast. Once, I finished my last show of the tour just south of Boston and drove home to Michigan overnight, stopping only briefly at a rest stop to take a quick "power nap".

More recently, however, I've generally divided long trips into two days of driving. In recent years, Lucy and I would stop in Kent, Ohio for the night. The last time I brought the boys, we stopped there overnight and I took them to see the memorial for the Kent State shootings.

But now Charlie can drive. And he was eager to just push on through, so we did. Coming back, we did the same: There was a storm moving in, so we left Michigan, drove through Illinois to pick up Lucy, and then drove all the way back, arriving home after 22 hours on the road. Pretty epic.

Time on the highway in the dark can seem dull, but the enforced proximity also has a positive side. With our hyperconnected lives, I've sometimes found it hard to find time with my boys for deep conversations: they and I are always on the go and rarely connect for long enough to get past the day-to-day topics.

We had a wonderful, far-ranging conversation during the drive home. It was an opportunity for reflection on important topics: their childhoods, my parenting, and our shared lives. I learned a lot about them and how they're coming to see the world. They're both fine, upstanding, thoughtful people. It's a memory I will treasure.