Paradigm shifting

Okay, so I wasn’t planning to really blog much during this road trip, in part because I intend to spend the vast majority of my writing time and energy on finishing Da Book and in part because I figured my absence would make your hearts grow fonder. Wow, that was a long sentence, wasn’t it?

Back to the point, assuming I have one – your opinion regarding which will develop as we continue, so let’s move on, shall we – wait… Where was I going with that?

Oh, yeah… So, I wasn’t planning a blogitious missive for this weekend but then things happened. Things like spending four days in the car with Daughter Two and contemplating four more days driving in the opposite direction with Daughter One. Like listening to Two explain her injection molding project and One explain her glass blowing projects and sort of understanding because I’ve run a molding plant before but not entirely because it wasn’t precisely this type of molding and the closest I’ve come to glass blowing is watching it demonstrated at the glass museum in Tacoma. Things like the Panel Light of Death coming on when the car and I are 2300 miles from home and my internet research of the meaning of said alarm boiling down to “yeah, that’s a bad’un!”

And of course things like worrying about Two moving to the Big City where Al Capone once did business and worrying about her fate at the hands of Chicagoans only to find the neighborhood around her apartment charming and lively and (it seems) relatively safe and homey. And reacquainting myself with One who has lived across a continent from us for several years and whose intelligence and wit and down to earth logic I’d forgotten I so cherish (I will never again allow my relationships with One and Two to be reduced to texts and sound bites).

And observing Mary in the role of Mom-helping-daughter-get-settled and being reminded (although I insist this reminder was not at all necessary) just what a great Mom she has been to our children. Watching her in action helps me to understand the unseen void experienced by the motherless central character in the book I’m writing. Where would I have been without this woman; never mind, don’t even want to go there.

This trip has been unexpectedly about noticing and learning anew. My views of key concepts and characters in my life are shifting. I’m discovering that while I am still loved and respected and considered, I am no longer entirely necessary. They are ready.

And I’m okay with that.