On Friday afternoon I pulled into the pick up line at Nicholas’ school and settled down to wait for him. Soon I spotted him running towards me with his gigantic backpack slung over his shoulder and a huge grin on his face.

“Rooooaaaad trip!” I whooped as he opened the car door and got in.

It’s been a rough month for us, replete with the usual heavy doses of teen and parental angst, handwringing and recriminations. School has been stressful and that stress has bled into our home life. Too many of our interactions lately have revolved around nagging and arguing about schoolwork. We were both glad to escape from all of that, if only for a weekend.

Once we established the happy fact that Nicholas would NOT be dragging his backpack to Wisconsin, we relaxed into the hour and a half drive to Richmond International Airport. This is the first year my son has been able to sit next to me in the passenger seat, rather than in one of the back seats. It felt great to be chatting side by side, at the very beginning of our trip to visit our friends.

Dinner at Richmond Airport

We switched planes in Detroit. As we made our way to the gate, we passed through this tunnel:

“We seriously need to have one of these in our house. You have to take a video of this!” Nicholas insisted.

“You know what Grandma would say if she saw us videotaping this?” I asked Nicholas as I complied with his request.

“What would she say?” he asked.

“She’d call us a couple of chonoms.”

“What does that mean?”

“Chonom is Korean for country bumpkin.”

“She’d be totally right. We are a couple of chonoms getting all excited about the light show. Oooo! Now let’s videotape this fountain!”:

We finally arrived in Madison, bedraggled and exhausted from our travels, but so happy to see our friends waiting for us in the lobby.

More on our trip tomorrow…