Harvey

Sometimes I lose perspective. It is so easy to get embroiled in the present, and the storm und drang of the RIGHT NOW and HOW THINGS ARE, that I forget to stand back and see the big picture or look at everything from a different angle. (I need to write more often.)

What prompted this foray into my somewhat warped personality and ways of dealing with life was the fact that we drove our seven-year-old Jeep to Providence last weekend to give to our daughter and her family as a replacement for their even-older Honda. The Jeep is still in good shape, had better tires and about half the mileage of the Honda, and we were thinking about replacing it anyway, so it all seemed like a good idea.

That should have been the end of it: drive, deliver, do the paperwork. But, after we'd turned it over, in the process of installing the kids' carseats in the back, Kay and Paul and Audrey were climbing in and around the car, and pointing things out to each other...The height would make it easier to change a diaper in the back, and also make it easier to load and unload. Audrey could stand on the back seat and see what was going on while all that was happening. The extendable cover on the back storage space would be nice to hide purchases (and provide a hiding place for Audrey.) There was an outlet in back where Audrey's DVD player could be plugged in for trips. The V6 engine might allow Paul to pull a trailer for shows. A myriad of possibilities that we had never seen or considered. "And," Audrey asked,  "is the Jeep a boy or a girl and what is its name?" I'm not sure I've ever named a car or thought about its gender.

I boarded my flight home with a somewhat bemused smile. The Jeep was embarking on a new life, appreciated in different ways for entirely different reasons: it was like sending a child off to school on his/her own. Not mine anymore--at least not ONLY mine. But other people would see the value, the positive (and I guess, the negative) aspects, where before, they were reserved for me alone.

This isn't only about a used car, of course. There are multitudes of events and experiences that I miss because I am so enamored of my own blindered viewpoint. Maybe I should expand my sight range on other things as well. Who knows what hidden bonuses I might find?

I wish I had a photo of the Jeep to paste right here. He would remind me of that. Maybe his name is Elwood--like the Jimmy Stewart character who saw something no one else could see: a giant rabbit named Harvey.

Trip-Tik

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I joined AAA. We were on our honeymoon, and because JC did not have a great deal of leave time, we had gotten married just before the annual Navy JAG Conference here in DC, so that we could have an extra week or so. Of course, JC had to attend some of the meetings, so I ran errands while he was otherwise engaged--returning a few wedding gifts, writing 'thank you's--and joining AAA, preparatory to our long drive cross-country. (JC was at that time stationed in Oceanside, CA.) I got maps (GPS not having been invented yet, much less the cell phones and laptops and other devices we now rely upon..) And I got Trip-Tiks. Personalized maps and guidance across the entire country, pointing out the locations of hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and places of interest along the way. I wish I'd saved them.

We were very young, and though JC had made this trip before, it was my first cross-country adventure. I'd never traveled too far from home before, and certainly never beyond the Mississippi. The Trip-Tik reduced the magnitude of the trip to small bites, which made the concept far more digestible. And nibble by nibble, bite by bite, we ate up the distance between here and there--"there" being San Diego.

Today I found myself again at the AAA office, asking for another trip to be sliced and diced into manageable chunks. We are driving to Rhode Island to deliver a car to our daughter and her young family. There have been a lot of trips in between, lots of water under lots of bridges, some with little girls sprawled in the "wayback" of a station wagon, some replete with "Are we there yet?"s and "I'm hungry"s. I remember trips where each child got a roll of quarters at the beginning of the trip, and had to give them up, one by one, for various acts of mommy-prohibited behavior. What was left at our destination was souvenir money, to do with as they pleased. There have been happy trips and sad trips, funerals and graduations, weddings and vacations...How much time have we spent in the car over the years? More than we should have, I'll warrant. And yet, those rides are where we made decisions, discussed problems, figured out answers. It was where we listened to books on tape, told stories, sang songs, played games, and did a lot of talking. It was there that we discovered ourselves and each other.

There's no map for all the territory we've covered in the car, no Trip-Tik that delivers us safely to our destination. But there's comfort in the Trip-Tik lesson: no matter how long the trip, no matter how arduous, or how many construction delays or traffic jams we encounter, we get where we want to go, bit by bit, mile by mile, by taking each journey a page at a time, managing each piece and moving forward, ever forward.