Since we both grew up in Wyoming, but we’re raising our boys on the redwood coast and we’re still determined to raise our boys knowing our families we drove a lot of miles. Being teachers meant that we had the same schedules so we could always drive back for Christmas vacation. And because we had family in three corners of Wyoming, we often drove 1300 miles to Wyoming and another thousand circumnavigating the state. If you know Wyoming in December and early January you know we had to go nearly 400 extra miles in the winter when Yellowstone is closed, and that we often had blinding blizzards and equally hazardous ground blizzards we called snow snakes.
But sometimes we had long trips in the summer too, or sometimes our families would come to visit us.
But we always had this odd sense that our lives together had been following a plan, a plan where we would just barely have enough things, always be in debated to others and yet have an abundance of love. I called it my two pair of pants deal. Everytime I got a third pair, one of them would be destroyed. Everytime we got a “crisis” needing extra money, just that amount would unexpectedly appear. If we really needed tires or a washing machine went out, suddenly there would be the money to pay for it. But our life would be decorated in early American yard sale. Once we “borrowed” a hundred dollars from my parents for groceries and spent $25 on a couch at a heard sale and apologized. My Dad, in typical Paul Miller logic said, “I’d rather sit on a couch than a $25 bill.”
And we had many on the road miracles that saved us from our own poor choices.
One time I was driving along long street stretch of road between Lakeview, Oregon and , Nevada. My husband was asleep and it was about 45 minutes after sunset. Suddenly he sat up and declared, “cow!” And I hit the brakes. Then we looked at each other and laughed and I started moving again, but just then we crested a small hill and right in our lane, with her back to us, was a solid black cow, on a blacktop road in the high desert blackness.
One time we were driving in blinding snow. The kind you feel like you’re in a Star Trek warp speed simulation as white needles of light fly past you. Our oldest son, merely 2, suddenly asked, “God please lift up this storm.” And we sighed and wished it were so simple, but literally within a few car lengths, the pavement was dry and clear and stayed that way until we arrived at our motel.
Another night, our heater wasn’t keeping up, I was scraping frost from the inside of the windshield, we had four parrots in cages with us for the stupid reason we wanted to give one to my mom and show off the others. It was 8 below zero, f* but also windy. We needed a motel but there was only one, small non chain motel for a hundred miles. I was terrified they’d never let us have the birds in the motel but as we stepped into the lobby, we saw the owner behind the counter. With a cockatoo on her shoulder. In the morning our car was dead and she let us stay hours late as it thawed enough to get going again.
