Business Trip Help

I have been fortunate over the last couple of years that I haven't had to do much business travel.  There was a while a few years ago where I had to travel several times a year, and I always hated it.  It looks like I'm getting back into that phase again where I will need to be traveling a little more.  I just had a 5-day trip to DC a month ago and expect to have a couple more similar ones next year.  It's hard on Stacy when I'm gone, but the kids get pretty worked up as well.  Before I left last time L was very sullen and just not herself for a day or two before I left.  As we were getting in the car to go to the airport she slipped me a letter without letting Stacy and N see her.  She said I couldn't open until I got to Washington.  I cheated and opened it on the plane.  This is what I found.

The Harmony of Great Minds

I took N for burgers today at Five Guys. We had a table near the open kitchen so we sat and watched the crew building the burgers as we ate. I had noticed that they label each burger with a little sticker with a number on it, indicating the burger in the sequence that you ordered it. The stickers were on a large dispenser in the wrapping area and each number had its own sticker roll to pull from. As the burgers would come off the line, the person wrapping them up would grab a sticker from the appropriate roll and fix it to the wrapped burger. I remember thinking that they probably have to keep a lot more rolls with the #1 on inventory than the others. Just as I was thinking this I noticed N looking at the sticker dispenser too. He turned to me and said, "Daddy, I bet they have to change the roll for #1 one a lot more than the others! 'Cause think about it - every order has a #1 but not all of them have a #3, #4 or #5."

I had thought about it, I told him.

Preparing for a Change of Scene

When we come home from a trip in the mountains, I am always struck with how quickly and suddenly the mountains end and the flatlands take over.  There is little that is gradual about it.  You twist and turn down the slopes and switch backs, pillowed by trees and cliffs and boulders, until, like a river finally bursting upon the ocean, you round a corner and there is the valley, long and flat stretching endlessly before you.

I'm glad I have traveled from the mountains to the flatlands many times, because I sense a change approaching that I might otherwise have never noticed until it was upon me. I expect a reorientation of the world is imminent, a shifting of the gears to accommodate a new terrain.  We will round a corner soon and have the road ahead restored to our sights, and we will see it stretch out before us, but it will be a different country, a landscape somehow essentially tied to the former, but of different ridges and hills and curves unlike those we've grown accustomed to negotiating.  The trees will be similar, bigger perhaps, but fewer and less shady. The road will still be clear and visible, but it will be opened up and uncomfortably straight and will require faster travel.  We will come out of our beloved gentle hills with all their meanders and rewarding corners, into a broader valley that will speak well of consistency and focus, but less of discovery and intimacy and charm. The road will promise progress and accomplishment, but it will not be as scenic and the traffic will slowly build.

Stacy came up to me this morning and in a quiet, professional, carefully metered voice, essentially said, "Would you go deal with her?, because I'm going to kill her."  I walked back to L's room to find her lying on her bed in an a defiant fetal position, her eyes all red and her lip quivering, stubbornness and frustration radiating from her.  I climbed up on the bed and slid up behind her, slipping my arms around her.  She momentarily stiffened as if to push me away, but then relented and let me lie there beside her, her disheveled mop of hair in my face. For two or three minutes we just lay there.  A little tremor would occasionally ripple through her body and there would be a brief, accompanying snort or sniffle, but nothing was said.  I sensed the pressure surging and coursing through her like it must under holes of a geyser, waiting, wanting to erupt, but the longer we lay, the gentler the ripples of preadolescent fury and angst sloshing through her became, and soon the fetal child slowly uncurled beside me and let me gently rub her back and shoulders.  After a bit her passivity melted and, as I lay at her back, she reached behind her, grabbed my arms and pulled me up against her,back-to-front, my chin resting in the nook at the back of her shoulder. She pulled my arms tight around her chest in her usual signal that she was ready to submit to a hug.  I obliged.  A few minutes later I got up and went back out to the family areas. A few minutes after that a crusty eyed girl with tangled hair emerged as well.  Only a few waning storm clouds followed in her wake.

The flatlands will be here soon. The terrain is changing. All the things I know about the hills and mountains won't serve me as well in the valley. I will have to learn new methods to handle the new country. Maybe the only viable technique is to just keep driving.

I'm still in the hills, but barely. I cannot begrudge the change of scene, and know the only acceptable road is forward, but it is with a heavier heart that I anticipate the final fleeting curves and prepare for the long trek ahead.  But in my soul I harbor the secret hope that on the other side, which, Lord willing, we all will reach eventually after logging many miles, there will once again be innocent hills and laughing curves and wonder and time and beauty.