Day #4
Road Trips.
I forget, mostly during the winter months, how much every aspect of myself absolutely LOVES a good road trip.
A little over a year ago my sweet angelic quiet and super sensitive daughter decided she wanted a tattoo for her 16th birthday…. WHAAAAT???!!! My inner rebel TOTALLY wants to support her inner rebel ~ we didn’t realize it was in her! AND I love that she told me what she wanted. I am a person who decides what she wants by knowing what she wants in the moment. My daughter is a person who usually decides what she wants by process of elimination…you can just about imagine how long it takes us just to decide what to eat for dinner every day…it’s maddening. I am just learning to ask her “What don’t you want for dinner” …it gets us there much faster! So ~ super psyched that she knew what she wanted for the big sweet 16 over a year in advance!
What does this have to do with road trips?
I had gotten my first two tattoos in Bismarck a little over a decade ago, so naturally, I ask her if she wants to go to the same person who did mine. She agreed…that person no longer was employed there but she decided she could also use a few hours out of town. She turned 16 two days ago, yesterday, we headed down to Bismarck and she actually did it!
Super proud of her.
Anyway, back to road trips. As we were heading back to Minot, the sun had finally come out in the late afternoon ~ Maybe it was the way the sun was hitting the fields, the blue sky, the rawness of my heart from earlier in the day, the excitement of my girl growing up, and the anticipation and adrenaline of the event slowly coming down, there was a pause in time while I was driving ~ I hear my guides say ~ “you sure do love road trips” ~ yes, I do.
The weather is usually pretty shitty in the winter months, and to be frank, I am a chicken shit on the roads if the weather in the winter is not a style of “Goldilocks” that includes the road report having green lines, zero chance of snow, wind at a slight breeze, and blue skies ~ had a few “too close for comfort” driving on the highway in the winter moments I never want to chance repeating. I will, if I must, but do not enjoy white knuckle driving.
Anyway, back to the road trips I love. They are good for my soul. It’s like the highway or a dirt road brings me an escape and washes away anything residual that has been hanging around no longer serving me and rejuvenates me at the same time.
I decided in that moment I need to make road trips more of a priority in the winter months, as it truly feels like an act of self-love for me.
This morning, I woke still reflecting on road trips, perhaps I had been dreaming about them? In those swimming thoughts swirled an eddy of childhood memories, nostalgia, I smile, and I feel an excitement in my belly, and then I chuckle. No wonder I love road trips so much!
My dad! Oh, how I LOVED my daddy as a little girl ~ and still do! Everyone LOVES Ken, Kenny, Kenneth Levadney. My dad has always been a breath of fresh air with a heart of gold (mostly ;). I would get so annoyed when I was a child because he seemed to know EVERYONE and EVERYONE would come up and talk to him ~ like he was famous or something ~ well, as a daddy’s girl other people and things taking his attention away from me wasn’t cool. He was gone a lot when I was a kiddo…. he worked like 3 jobs, one being seasonal, and that was farming. He was in trouble with my mom as much as I was ;). I remember waiting at the window in anticipation asking my mom over and over again when he would be home ~ anticipating a giant bear hug and a good tickle or climbing all over him driving him nuts. Loved those bear hugs.
My mom would cook meals during harvest and we would run him food ~ I remember my dad giving my mom instructions on how to get out there ~ like she couldn’t remember, turn by the rock pile, and then again by the tree ~ one time even drawing her a “map” that seriously had a rock pile and a tree with 2 corners, it probably had more on it but that is what I remember. Makes me laugh. I LOVED going out there to see my favorite people, my dad, and my grandparents ~ his parents. I loved it because he loved it. I still love to go out there and just sit or pick rocks…. I do enjoy finding me a good rock. I was excited to see if my grandma had any peas ready for picking in her garden. I loved picking them, it was so satisfying, filling up the bucket, and I loved eating them right off the vine ~ yum ~ they were perfect.
My dad loves driving around. He would pile all of us in the vehicle and we’d go for a ride ~ never saying where we were headed, just for a ride. I used to be annoyed with the AM radio playing baseball games or classic rock, never knowing where we were going or what the point was, and having to drive through all the car lots before we headed back home, seriously what was that about ~ he'd just reply ~ never mind and chuckle at the protests.
Today, I love going on road trips with him out to the farm or to go play a round of golf, I love hearing and seeing him talking to EVERYONE that he knows from EVERYWHERE, like he is famous or something. I don’t mind listening to the baseball game, and I actually really LOVE classic rock. I love the peace it brings him and understand on a deep level how a good road trip rejuvenates his soul.
I realize that road trips are my way of connecting with him whether I am with him physically or not. I didn’t learn to play golf until my son was in high school, my parents had just started playing a few years earlier than I…we play at the 9 holes outside of Minot, still do…I think it is because we love the road trip. I wouldn’t do it any other way.
The other thing I am realizing in this moment, in the vehicle, we had him all to ourselves. There was no job or other person stealing his attention…geez…when I want to talk to my dad, I have asked him to take me for a drive ~ love how the subconscious is always at work…eventually we come to understand the “whys”.
He was practicing, role modeling, teaching a form of self-love and self-healing I have come to cherish ~ it is like a little escape or mini vacation from the stress or the mundane.
Feeling super thankful for my daddy in this moment as my heart is swelling and the good tears are welling up. I might just go get a good bear hug from him today or ask him if he is up for a drive :).
What has this got to do with self- love? Hopefully, you already know.
Here’s to the man who showed me living on the edge and getting away with it was perfectly normal - another fool on his own fool’s journey.
Cheers Dad,
Cheryl