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PrintIt’s Time for a Family Conversation
Gasoline-- $325
Best Western Hotel-- $89
Fast Food-- $68, a stomach ache and Imodium AD ($5)
44 straight hours confined with your 3 kids: priceless
Some of the best things in life you can’t buy.
Sometimes, you have to work to get the best things in life.
At one time in our lives, we had three hyperactive boys of pre-school age and two full-time practices. (My wife is a pediatrician.) Life was chaos. Going to the bathroom alone was a luxury. So, one year, for Christmas, my wife’s present was a quiet home. I paid a wonderful lady to clean our house and then took the boys away for a few days to learn to ski and snowboard. For fathers thinking of doing this, start with simple goals—like keeping the kids from killing themselves and coming back with the same number of kids you left with.
Since then, it’s become a tradition, this annual boy’s trip out west to snowboard in the Rockies. Mom regains her sanity for another year, and we get to be pigs, er, boys for a week. This Christmas week of 2009, because the airports were delayed or shut down by weather and reactions to terrorism, we decided to drive for the first time ever. Yep, drive. 2000 miles. Though we were disappointed that we’d miss the new see-through airport scanners that could double as your annual physical—probably the government’s plan to save money in health care. Hmmmm…checking in at the airport kinda feels like a colonoscopy… (or maybe a prostate exam) ....but I digress.
All was well until we hit the three feet of snow that closed I-80 in Nebraska and I-70 in Kansas. Our only choice: White-knuckled driving through icy, windswept, desolate country roads in the middle of nowhere--for hundreds of miles. Death grip on the steering wheel, I actually stopped to get aspirin so as not to get a blood clot.
About 17 hours into the drive:
“Dad, are we going to die? Mom’s going to be really mad if we do.”
“Dad, I have to pee – really bad. Is it against the law to pee on the side of the road?”
“Dad, I think your headlight’s out.”
“Dad, did you just hit a bird? Bugs don’t have feathers…”
“Dad, is that a cop behind us with his lights on?”
I was speeding to the next town because someone’s bladder was about to explode, windshield covered with feathers and guts, one headlight out and the car looked like we’d rolled around in frozen mud. After he stopped laughing, the officer helped us out, thankfully no ticket.
Two days later, we made it into the mountains, rewarded with their beauty and a foot of fresh snow. Carving down the mountain, quads burning, now that’s flying.
During the drive, there were no radio stations or cell phone coverage. No distractions.
It’s amazing, when everything else is removed, how a parent and child can talk. Really talk, about their lives, what’s important to them and just about… life. I learned everything about their colleges, classes, friends, girlfriends and they learned about each other, too. That was priceless.
The modern family has a lot stacked against it these days. Kids (from pre-teen to young adults) and parents can be too busy, too distracted and lives too fragmented for in-depth conversations. Technology is changing the way they interact, and they’re changing fast. How often can they have an extended conversation without a TV, radio, iPOD, computer or cellphone on? Even though I may text or email regularly with the boys, the conversations we had on the drive emphasized how superficial that form of communication is---there’s no comparison to turning everything off and just talking.
Bonding as a family takes work – a lot of work. And it may be just as painful to do, in your own way, as our drive. It starts with removing all the other distractions our society has.
You know what’s interesting? Many parents and their kids might say: “but what do we talk about?” That’s the point. It sounds like everyone might need to get to know each other a little better.
In the end, if you ask the boys now, the best part of that trip wasn’t the skiing and snowboarding; it was the laughs we had in the car. Of course, that could have been delirium from our hypoglycemia, or hypothermia, or hypoxia….
Would we do it again? Are you nuts? Absolutely not.
Next time, we’re flying.
