Six years ago, I buckled my two-year-old daughter and four-year-old son in their car seats and started driving east.
We were heading to Duluth so we could meet their brand new baby cousin. What ensued was a week of newborn snuggling, beach dates, kite flying and the long drive back home, much of which occurred after dark with my two toddlers asleep in the back seat.
Last Tuesday, less than 24 hours after returning home from what I thought was our last summer adventure, my sister texted to say her water had broken; another baby cousin was on the way.
“I wish we could just hop in the car and start driving!” I told the kids.
“Let’s do it!” said my son without hesitation.
“It’s 10 hours one way, and we have to be back for school before Monday… That’s a lot of driving,” I replied.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I want to see that baby.”
Our bags were still packed. We threw some clean clothes on top of the dirty ones, refilled the gas tank and hit the road, somehow arriving before the baby, so we got to be her first visitors.
During the visit, we also spent some time on a sandy shore of Lake Superior — the same beach we visited when we were there six years ago.
I grew up in Michigan, so visiting the Great Lakes was something we did all the time. I loved and love those lakes, but they are family–familiar and comforting in their vastness. For my kids, a mostly forgotten trip taken more than half their lifetimes ago did not prepare them to meet big water again. It was a gray, unsettled day, the wind blowing as hard as it does here on the plains, whipping the water into foamy waves. As we crested the sandy slope that led to the beach and saw Lake Superior up close, my son started whooping and yelling. Both kids danced and shouted as they tumbled down the dunes toward the shore.
For the next hour, they danced and played, running to the edge of the water to get splashed by the white crests, then running back to the elaborate driftwood structures they were building, just as they had done on our first visit all those years ago. For that hour, it felt like time was standing still. They were somehow my big kids and my little kids again at exactly the same moment.
Yesterday we drove home. There’s no need to wait until they fall asleep now. Instead, they used my iPhone, and we went round-robin choosing our favorite songs to play for each other as the miles unfurled before us. Consequently, my knowledge of modern music is now considerably more comprehensive than it was a week ago, and my kids know a few more hits from the ‘80s and ‘90s. We also talked about the sweetness of our new baby cousin, about the lake, about school starting, about random memories and all things we are looking forward to in the year to come. I miss my little kids, but gosh, I love my big kids!
Today, I walked them to school for the first day back, and they both ran to the door without saying goodbye. I felt all the feelings parents are supposed to feel about such things. But I was also thinking about the lake — big like the prairie is wide, timeless as the sky and the wind and the grass. These places that cradle and enfold us, hold our memories, open us up to possibility; landscapes that echo the expansiveness of our journeys here are such a gift.
When I finish this column, I’ll go work in the garden. The summer squash needs to be harvested. The tomatoes are almost ripe. I’ll cut some zinnias to put in a vase on the kitchen table for a little color to enjoy at supper tonight when our big kids sit and tell us all about their first day at school, their faces even brighter than the faces of the flowers.
