On Saturday, I went on a road trip to visit my Mum with the eighteen-year-old who didn’t stop talking all the way there and all the way back. I was hoping for a sing along type of trip but she wanted to talk about the state of the nation, and by ‘nation’, I mean, her life.
If you ever want to find out what your children are thinking, feeling, wanting, hating, wishing for, then take them on a car trip that takes longer than an hour and a half.
So of course, she talked about everything, and tears and laughter flowed (really!)
I suppose now is the time to let you know that I have this habit of easily getting lost because I don’t take any notice of where I am heading or where I have been. (Yes, I get the symbolism of this statement)I even get lost in car parks.
Once, at Melbourne Central, I lost my car and had to get the security officer to drive me around in a golf cart while I randomly clicked my ignition keys to see if my car lights turned on.
Once, I dropped my husband in Port Melbourne, and on the way home, I got lost and ended up over the West Gate Bridge.
So naturally, while listening to the live audio book of The Life and Times of Tansy G, we ended up in the wrong town. Really!
We went to the wrong frickin’ town.
*Please note, I was actually crying at the moment we passed the turn off to our destination, because Tansy was talking about something super sad, can’t remember what it was now, but I was crying and telling her I just wanted a sing along trip and look at what she had done.
So we ended up somewhere else, which, to be honest, we weren’t entirely unhappy about because we saw this when we drove through the main street.
And the sugar-coated fairies were serving these little beauties.
And we decided that it was meant for us to go to the donut van by Lake Weeroona, because hot jam donuts are the traditional road food, and when in country Victoria, you have to assimilate.
You just have to!
Or perhaps were never lost. Perhaps we just needed the extra time to talk, to listen, to grieve about the last time we drove to there, when my Dad was told there was nothing to be done for his troubles, and the time when my brother was taken from there to Xanadu HQ, so his troubles could be fumigated by chemotherapy. Perhaps we needed to talk about courage and loss, and how we all have moments in life where we have to step up and be present, and the other times, when we can only think about getting through the next hour of life.
Or perhaps we just needed a hot jam donut.