Musings at Altitude

Me and my 3 girls went on a road trip today – about 300 miles to where I needed to visit one of our job sites and they needed something to do.  So we packed into my SUV (did I mention my oldest brought her female dog along too?) and headed North out of Colorado into Wyoming.  I was sitting in the co-pilot seat, head bobbing up and down as I was still incredibly tired from my trip into the Arctic North of Alaska and then still recovering from the red eye plane ride back into the “lower 48” just yesterday.

In one period of awakeness, I started to think about this drive.  In the car with me was my wife of 25+ years who is closing in on menopause…she was the pilot.  In the back seat behind her was my 23 year old daughter who’s about to burst as she heads into her 9th month of pregnancy and can’t possibly get comfortable in any position in any vehicle.  And behind me was my 14 year old, who never lets much of anything bother her and brings up random stuff all the time – never a dull moment.  As a 14 year old, she’s exiting the girl phase and rapidly entering the “I have to look good all the time” teen phase, and those of you with teens understand full well that moving into this phase is as traumatic for those of us around her as the pre-menopausal and the almost-ready-to-deliver phases.  

As I was thinking about those on this particular journey with me, my 14 year old put her foot up through the side of my seat and rested it on my arm rest.  As she looked at her toes she pondered, “I wonder why my second toe (the one next to the big toe) is longer than my big toe?  If it was shorter, my toes would look like the Cingular commercial.”  That cracked us all up, and sadly, we all knew what she was talking about!

After a few minutes of relative quiet, her big sister and her got into a heated discussion about something, and I remember only the following.  My 23 year old told her, “you’re on the right side of the car.”  And my 14 year old responded with, “if we were going the other direction I wouldn’t be on the right side.”  I got a great chuckle out of that one and I looked over at my pre-menopausal wife and she was trying not to completely die laughing, thus putting us all at risk since we were driving in the middle of nowhere. 

As the discussion continued, I went back to my semi-sleeping stupor, knowing that all was well in my family.   After all, with 3 women in the car in 3 of the most emotionally complicated phases of their individual lives, sleeping may have been the best option for me…or at least pretending to sleep to avoid any conflict, confrontation, or misunderstanding that I might cause!