My daughter wakes with a fever, and so we leave her uncle’s house. No skiing on this sunny day. We head back that familiar way, through the White Mountains dazzling beneath fresh snow, the way we’ve traveled so many times, through so many years.
She’s sleeping and not sleeping, the roads nearly empty on this early Monday morning. I’ve switched the radio to Maine public radio, a steady stream of coronavirus news.
What she has is fever — miserable and simple. She’ll ache, sleep, and heal. As I drive, and the radio moves through the BBC broadcast, I remember myself as a teenager listening to Terry Gross while my father drove us home from the dentist’s office. At some undefined point, Terry Gross morphed from the most boring person in the universe to a woman who asked questions whose answers I wanted to know.
Maybe it’s nothing more than my sleeping teenager beside me not quite legally ready to drive yet — or maybe it’s just the driving time to think — but I feel utterly a parent. It’s not a cherished, dear moment (she really wanted to stay and ski) but our lives will move on. For these few hours of driving, we’re in an unbroken space. Nothing to do but keep on….
Stony Soil Vermont 
I hope she’s better. Mine is currently in that very uncomfortable space of not knowing what to do with her life or even next (and no responses to her beautiful cover letters and resumes) and it’s painful and her misery submerges me too. A kind of fever. It sucks when they’re not well. This is our life.
You have my sympathies with your daughter. It’s a really unpleasant place to be sending out letters and resumes. My oldest starts a new job today, too, and that’s another uncertainty.
Oh! Good luck to her. I hope it’s a winner – at least for a good while.
Good luck to your daughter, too. You’re right — their lives are our lives, too.
I always love driving with my boys. The car is such a perfect container for so many things. Now only eight more months until the second born gets his license… I’m really going to miss it.
I hope your daughter feels better soon. I like how you made the best of things and turned the drive home into a reflective, serene time.
The perfect, non-snowy driving conditions certainly helped. 🙂