We were on our way to the Dairy Goat Parade and Festival in Spindale, NC (where else would we spend a Saturday afternoon?) when it happened.
We were rolling around mountain passes, zinging like a pinball whacked between paddles, cruising through towns with names like Batcave and Chimney Rock.
“It’s too far,” Jake whined. Until this moment he had been remarkably patient about the sadly DVD-player-less trip.
“We’ll be there soon, sweetie,” I promised, craning my neck to be sure Lily was occupied with her Z Bar while I pretended I wasn’t lying.
“I’m hot!” Jake repeated in that way three-year-olds have of saying things more loudly because they are just sure you will listen better.
I turned around in my seat to look at him for as long as I could without courting motion sickness. He didn’t look great. I reported my findings to Mike, who dutifully cranked up the air.
“I’m still hot!” Jake complained. “It’s too far!”
So I pulled cheese crackers out of the diaper bag, handed a few to Lily, and let Jake settle into them with glee. Relieved by the relief flooding the back seat, I waved away pesky notions about what cheese crackers would do to me if I were strapped into the back seat of a Honda CRV on a twisty mountain road.
Apparently they did the same thing to Jake. “I’m HOT!”he declared with sudden panic.
I turned around just in time to see the inevitable. Right down the front of his shirt.
“We need to pull over,” I said to Mike as calmly as I could. As if Jake’s pealing sobs weren’t enough to tell him we had just encountered our first case of child car sickness.
I can’t say I wasn’t somewhat relieved that Jake was sitting behind Mike and Mike therefore got to him first when we pulled to the side of the road. By the time I made my way over with wipes from the diaper bag he had already removed Jake’s tee shirt and was carefully depositing it and Jake’s unfortunate Bubbe blanket in those scented bags we carry around for poopy diapers but never use .
“You’re so brave,” I promised Jake as he clung to me, all hackey-sack college-like in his clam diggers, orange Keens, and skinny bare chest.
If I were to have suggested yoga at this moment — and, lovely as the mountain scenery was, a bit of gravel at the side of the road is not the place I am likely to start striking yoga poses with a still wobbly three-year-old boy — I would probably have eased him into a gentle baddha konasana. Maybe a simple standing forward fold. Or, hey, I’ll bet a little alternate nostril breathing would have cooled him right down.
But let’s be serious — no mother swoops in with yoga moves to comfort her sick little boy and I wouldn’t even have mentioned them if I didn’t feel obligated to tie this aimless story about my son throwing up in the car to the theme of this website.
Instead, slowly, with many more hugs and a little fresh air, we got him back into the car and slunk gingerly around another series of curves.
“Look!” I said brightly when Jake began to moan again. “Remember when we came to this beach?”
He didn’t. “I’m still hot,” he cried, squirming in his seat that had thankfully been protected by Bubbe.
Up went the air conditioning as we headed into another series of altitude-climbing twists and I clutched a diaper in my hands, ready to thrust it at Jake at the first gurgle of sickness, and cursed my decision to raise my children in the mountains.
And then the road straightened out. We were able to speed along as if we could leave behind Lily’s I’ve-been-in-the-car-too-long-and-I’m-going-to-fall-asleep-as-soon-as-we-reach-our-destination grumbles.
“Spindale!” I cried with relief as we rolled into town and spotted the Goat Festival. We parked the car on a designated lawn as Jake crowed with amazement that we were driving on grass!
He threw himself out of the car and into fresh air, shirtless and carefree, as I roused the slumbering Lily just enough to ask her if she wanted to nap in the stroller. Her great interest in her surroundings provided a negative answer, and who was I to contradict her when she’d endured an hour in the car and deserved to see some goats dammit?
“We need to find you a shirt,” I said, examining Jake’s protruding pale belly. I feared him not standing out even more than I very sensibly feared sunburn.
This seemed like a great idea to Jake until he caught sight of the goats housed in pens under a large tent. “Goats!” he cried, galloping away in all his inappropriately shirtless glory.
So besotted with goats was I that I very nearly forgot that my son was half dressed. And though he would have preferred I entirely forget it, we managed to coax him away from the goats to check out the wares on the parade route. Yes, a goat parade was scheduled to begin shortly.
We scanned the booths, shopping in heavy sunshine as Jake’s desire for a new goat tee shirt plummeted. Cleverly, I pointed out the goat milk ice cream stand and herded my increasingly hot and cranky clan toward it.
“We’re getting the American Dairy Goat Association shirt,” I said, putting my foot down as shirtless Jake rode in the stroller, enormous cup of chocolate goat milk ice cream in his lap.
“IT FELLLLLL!” he screeched, not two steps from the ice cream stand. “IT’S TOO FULL!”
We stopped to scrape the toppled ice cream out of his lap. This was one of those rare moments when your child has undergone a trauma so legitimate that a parent can actually remain patient in the face of imminent meltdown.
“Would you like us to eat some of it for you?” I generously offered, having ordered vanilla myself and being curious about the chocolate. It’s so nice when you can make your child happy so effortlessly.
And so we arrived back at the American Dairy Goat Association booth with our half-naked, ice cream snarffling boy and proceeded to buy him a tie-dyed tee with goats dancing a waltz on the front. In a flash he was transformed from hillbilly to hippie, thus embracing the entire spectrum of his hometown of Asheville.
With Jake finally both clad and nourished, we threw ourselves into the goats. Jake and I agreed that when it comes time for another pet we will bypass hounds and head for a Nigerian Pygmy as stuffed animal adorable as the kid we got to pet. We marveled at the udders of the milkers quietly eying us before nibbling at Jake’s tee shirt. I quaked a bit at the seriousness with which one of the handlers told me Jake is not too young to start learning to handle goats so he can enter the junior division showing at next year’s festival. She handed her goat’s lead to him as if to prove the point, and he looked awfully handy standing there at just about the same height as the patient goat.
When we’d had enough of goats, we stopped for a much needed lunch and then headed down the lovely, wide, straight highway to the interstate.
“Look, it’s Isothermal Community College,” I said, discovering to my delight that there is plenty of scenery to be had on major highways. “And look at all the motels,” I added, pointing to the Holiday Inn Express, the Days Inn, and the sign for a Motel 8, all of which, I understood, were a sight less scenic than the inns dotting the road in Chimney Rock. Still, they were something to look at, which I believe qualifies them as scenery.
As we headed up I-26 I couldn’t help but enjoy the wide open space, the straight, straight, straightness of it, the efficiency with which exits are marked and off-ramps part neatly from the highway leaving you to imagine the worlds that await at the other end.
Maybe, I thought, the highway isn’t as interesting — as yogic — as the winding backroads. But it has a beauty all its own, at least with the spring green trees lining the road waving branches at us as we passed and the sun turning the sky a bright, even blue above us.
So who’s to say the direct path isn’t the one with the most potential? Who can guarantee that if we pull off the highway at a random exit in search of lunch we’ll be forced to glean whatever kernels of nutrition we can from a Wendy’s drive through? Or that the picturesque diner on the winding road in Batcave serves food that is all that much better?
In other words, while it’s about the journey, sometimes you don’t get to choose your path. And when you don’t get to choose you shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the efficient-if-charmless one.
Because sometimes, just sometimes, a little barf in the back seat will show you the way to a layer of beauty you hadn’t ever noticed existed.