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Thursday, April 5, 2012

"We're Having An Adventure!"

I'm going to take a moment to expound ($$ vocab word -- college tuition at work) on the second half of the blog title.  I added it because, along with the quote from Marjorie Hinckley on the "About Me" page, it is has been a guiding concept of my life and one I learned from my mother.  It has been her life motto, probably since she was born and before she knew what a "motto" was.  And largely because she is rather prone to getting herself and anyone around her stuck in "adventures."

 Driving would be the top of the list.  My mother is not a "bad" driver, per se.  Granted, she has actually rear-ended my dad, damaging both family cars in one "adventure."  And she has yelled at me for locking the car doors when we had arrived at our destination, parked, and exited the vehicle.

"Jennifer Ann! Now I'm going to have to UNlock the doors when we get back!"

"But we're in downtown Portland.  Under the freeways.  The car will get stolen."

"I KNOW!  Then I can get a new car!"

Ok, that's not actually a driving situation.  But it does help aid understanding of my mother's relationship with automobiles.

The main issue she has with vehicles is that they cannot, in fact, read her mind.  She sees this a major design flaw.  They consistently take her where she drives the vehicle, rather than taking her where she intended to go.  So unreasonable of the, you know, non-sentient vehicle . . .

It was a given, as we were growing up, that upon entering the station wagon (just aged myself, didn't I?), that we would end up at one of three locations: the grocery store, the high school, or the church.  It did not matter what was the intended location.  We would end up at one of these, randomly selected from the three-slot roulette wheel operating in the "destinations" lobe of her brain.

This was taken in stride, as we all knew that as soon as we got to whichever slot the ball dropped into, we would then be happily on our way to where we actually wanted to be.  Very occasionally, we would get there first time around!  Much merriment would then commence.

It was a different matter, though, when the intended destination was somewhere she had never been before.  Directions and My Mother, you see, had not been on speaking terms for many years.  Truthfully, I think it was more a matter of not speaking the same language.  Directions speak a very precise sort of language.  Very rigid and inflexible.  They can be just so picky, you know?  They really mean turn on THIS street, the next street or two won't do.  And so harsh with their insistence that a mile really is 5,280 feet.  They just don't allow for the variations of "a mile," such as "a ways down the road" or "just drive for a bit."

Here is the dialect of my mother's "direction language": (these are actual directions she gave me when I was about 18.  I needed to find a particular church building I had not been to before.)

Mom: "Take I-205, exit Mill Plain, and then just wiggle around till you get there."

Me:  "..."

In all fairness, it was just two turns and about two blocks from the freeway.  And I did find it after a bit of "wiggling."  But still.

The worst episode happened when I was about 13, I think.  As I recall, we need to go to the east Vancouver area.  We lived in north Vancouver.  This is, at most, 20 minutes driving slowly.  Same town, same state.  Our first clue we were not, possibly, headed in the right direction was when we crossed the big, big bridge over the big, big river.  You know, the one they call the Columbia.  It's 2 miles across.  Tough to miss. That meant we were in Oregon.  Wrong state.  Then another bridge.  The one that crosses the Willamette.  Wrong city.  And then some more bridges (ok, honestly, this is easy to do in Portland.  No less than 238 bridges (not really, more like 10) split the city, and nearly all of the roads are one-way, with occasional "Buses Only" roads thrown in for added fun and laughs.  Ha.  Ha.  Ha.) until we pulled over and stopped.  In southeast Portland.  It had been nearly two hours since we had left the house.

My mom started to giggle.  So did we.  And then we were all laughing and the ridiculous situation we we were in.  She turned her head and grinned at us: "We're having an Adventure!"

This event dearly came back to my mind about 5 years ago when I, in my mad rush of Brainstorm, decided I should take my kids to see the 3D playing of the Polar Express, shown at the Evergreen Air Museum every December.  This would normally be a 90-minute drive from my home.  Genius that I am, I chose to go the day after one of the worst snow storms the northwest has had in years. (What? The storm was done, danger over. Right?) There wasn't just a little snow.  There were PILES of snow everywhere. The roads were more than a foot deep.  The wheel tracks were 18 inches high. The side roads were more than 2 feet deep. This is because the PDX Metro area has 1.8 snowplows to go round. They have arm wrestling contests to see who wins and McMinnville apparently lost and ended up with the .8 of a snow plow.  It hooks up to a Prius.  (Enviromentally savy, eh?)

Anyway, as we were riding Mr Toad's Wild Ride down all the back roads to the museum, jostling and slopping past stuck car after stuck car, the thought crossed my mind: "Perhaps today was not the right day to go.  Hm."  But then I heard the back seat, as we bumped and slipped across two lanes and slid in to the next open lane, "Wahoo!" "Whee!" "This is better than Disneyland!" (Mental note to self: cheap vacation option for next year, plan tribute to snow gods in early October . . . )

My kids were having a ton of fun.  They didn't care we had been in the car for over 3 hours by the time we made it there.  And when we walked up to the museum's front doors and saw "Closed," we all burst out laughing!  Of course it was closed.  And it had JUST closed.  So we found a Red Robin and got 4 helpings of endless fries and milkshakes.  We were having An Adventure!

I dearly love my mother for teaching me how to laugh when things do not go according to plan.  When she takes a nap and does not want to be disturbed (this is every day), she puts the phone in the freezer.  Do not ask why.  But it does work.  When oatmeal for breakfast does not sound appetizing, she has a hot fudge sundae.  ("It's basically the same number of calories.") If the garage is cold, she will bring her mitre saw into the living room.  When she thinks blue would be a better color for the living room, she starts painting.  Now.  In whatever she's wearing and whatever else is going on. (read: church dress, middle of Thanksgiving Dinner). 

Take it from Sarah: Life was meant to be lived and enjoyed.  We're having an Adventure!

6 comments:

  1. She puts the phone in the freezer because modern phones do not have an off button for the ringer. I consider this an act of hostility on the designer's part. There is such a thing as a nap, you know.

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  2. Jen, can I just say, I love your mom - I do the same thing. I get "lost" ALL the time and I even have a GPS thingy now (tom-tom? Gaiman? I don't know)
    katie :)

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  3. Thank you for a Blog Worth Reading. I look forward to visiting regularly.

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    1. Thank you! That truly does mean a lot to me :D

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  4. Replies
    1. Dude. You're 1 in the pic. 1 year olds are supposed to be topless. It's cute :P

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