When I walked into the Ohio rest stop bathroom, I heard someone chatting. She had a southern accent, and I couldn’t tell if she was talking to someone else in the bathroom, to herself, or on the phone. That might sound weird, but I was trying not to pay attention to her, and there was someone else in the bathroom, so who could tell?

“…drove 600 miles yesterday.” I heard her say, and I didn’t hear anyone respond.

When I went to wash my hands, I noticed that she was on the phone. Phew! At least she wasn’t having a long conversation with herself in the ladies room of a rest stop.

I couldn’t help but focus on what she was saying, and her amazing southern voice made it extra interesting to be honest. (I love listening to people speaking in different accents!)

“Yesterday I hitched the trailer up by myself for the first time. It felt great.” She said.

Then she added, “I’m riding with the big boys now!”

I glanced at her noticing her casual jeans and ball cap, as I walked to meet my sons. I couldn’t stop smiling. I don’t know how many female truck drivers there are, although my google search later tells me that it was under 5% in 2021, but in 2022 it went up to 14%. Still, I don’t see many driving trucks I pass on my road trips. So, maybe that’s why I was so proud of this stranger and couldn’t help but laugh with the joy of hearing her own pride come through in her phone call.

My two sons wondered why I was smiling and laughing when I met them outside the restroom, so I tried to explain what I had heard.

“I’m riding with the big boys now!” I ended, trying to do the southern accent without sounding like I was mocking anyone.

“I can’t be sure, but I think this woman was a new truck driver. It was cool to hear her so proud of herself! ‘I’m riding with the big boys now!’”

The boys rolled their eyes at me, as is their often reaction. At first I was annoyed by their apathy about this story, this woman. Then I wondered if maybe it was a good thing that they didn’t think this was unusual.

Maybe they don’t think it’s anything worth talking about because they just aren’t surprised by badass women.

(They do live with me, you know…)

“Oh,” I remind my son, “Your TJ Maxx bags are back there too.”

“My God, mom. Can you just let me bring things in without it being such a hullabaloo?”

As I walk in with the Trader Joe’s bags, I think to myself how the things you might say to your friends and they would either think nothing of, or literally thank you for saying are things that can make teenagers so very, very, very mad at you.

That, or, my friends are just constantly repressing their absolute annoyance at me.

There’s nothing like parenting teenagers to make you wonder if you are a regular person with friends who actually love and appreciate you… or maybe you are actually an annoying, ridiculous, strict, rule-following, rule-making-up embarrassment to society.

I tell my 14 year-old this idea that he gets so mad at things that when I say to adults, they usually thank me. He needs an example, of course, and I point out how just a couple minutes before he was so mad when I reminded him there were other bags in the back seat.

He explains that it makes him feel stupid when I give him reminders of things he obviously knows. This is a valid feeling, but I remind him that there is no way I’d ever think he was stupid.

This tends to be how parenting goes these days.

At least they balance it out with being super sweet, and also hilarious.

“I’m just trying to teach you how to be a person!” I said recently, after my 14 year old was so annoyed by the way I was trying to help him figure out how and what to pack for a trip.

“I’m already more of a person than—” he started and I raised my eyebrows.

“Than Finn will ever be!” he finished, naming our dog, of course.

They’re stuck with me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I just might need extra reminders (for the next few years) from adults that the things I’m saying are rational, normal things.

And if they aren’t, just lie to me and say they are. Or, at the very least, break it to me gently that I am actually as weird as my kids think I am.

I’ve been burned before by Airbnb listings that say there is coffee but there isn’t, so I was sure to double check before leaving for this last Airbnb.

“There is! Fair trade and organic” was the host’s answer, so I was happy to not have to pack coffee.

I smile when I see the coffee maker, though.

It’s not that I can’t figure out the mechanics of this pour over coffee maker, it’s that I don’t know what the ratio of coffee to water is, and it looks like that’s a metal filter, but there are also paper filters, and it’s already bedtime. I really should figure it out now.

Time to find the coffee. Fortunately, this particular cabinet is labeled.

Unfortunately, the coffee is not what I expected.

Fortunately, I know how to use a coffee grinder. It just makes me laugh. Also, now I need to figure it out before bed so the sound of the grinding coffee doesn’t wake everyone up too early in the morning.

Somehow google is not as helpful as I want it to be. It’s all complicated diagrams and things in grams. The electric kettle they show does almost exactly match the one next to the coffeemaker though, so that’s good news.

I decide to just estimate the amount, and use the advice I see to wet the paper filter.

Unfortunately the coffee grinder doesn’t seem to work. Fortunately, that’s just the outlet.

In the morning my daughter gets the coffee party started. We enjoy the time figuring out an outlet for the kettle and the ratio of the coffee, and then watching the water drip, drip, drip.

We agree that this is a little like Little House on the Prairie, especially because this Airbnb doesn’t have any paper towels, or kitchen towels, or plastic trash bags for wet coffee filters. I hand a dripping rinsed coffee mug to her and she says, “At least Ma had like a rag to dry things off. Or, did she use an apron?”

None of it matters though, because I would drip hot water over any kind of coffee beans, ground or not in order to sit with my college daughter for coffee any morning, any time.

The next morning, she’s back at her dorm. I’m making coffee myself missing her. The boys and I will be checking out of this Airbnb any minute.

I watch the coffee drip, drip, drip.

I wonder why watching coffee slowly drip is something I can only appreciate on vacation.

I throw the wet coffee filter into the plastic bag we brought from our dinner last night.

My daughter texts me that she made her espresso this morning and actually kinda misses the fun coffee drip method.

And I write.

(And now my coffee is cold.)

Being mindful of the moment is nice but
Can you do too much noticing?
This is my thought today
at the bookstore
riding the escalator back up to find my kids

I had gone down the elevator
since the down escalator was broken
and I guess there were no stairs
which upon reflection seems odd

The elevator had been dark and creepy
The bathroom had a dispenser labeled “Healthy Soap”
what’s the other kind?
The sale table had the cutest multiple choice bag
50% off but if I got it,
would I be a walking advertisement for standardized tests?

Riding the one working escalator up
I heard a kid, not mine, yell
“No! I have too many at home.”
books, I think, he must be talking about books
“Jimmy!” He yelled, excited
“Watch me!”
I sensed, with my mom-senses, him running towards the broken escalator

“Max. Don’t!” a grown-up said
calm, firm
I laughed because it’s nice to be out of those days
of hoping my kids don’t climb broken escalators
and then I laughed because that’s both true
and not true

I found my kids near the games
searching for games I wouldn’t buy them
lightly arguing about where to get dinner
we walked to the elevator
my middle child, 17 now, started towards the broken down escalator
mumbling something about how
he could still use it

You just don’t know what 17 year-olds are going to say. This is the one thing about parenting that I feel I can say with confidence.

Like today in the van for example, when my 17 year old was telling my 14 year about some suffixes. I believe they started by talking about the words ending in “some.” They were intrigued by awesome being used in place of “amazing,” when it really should mean causing awe.

“Do you know what a suffix is?” H asked.

E started to answer, but H interrupted to say, “I was asking mom.”

I answered, and then was quizzed on prefix and affix. And then he started telling me about infixes – an affix in the middle of a word.

“It’s too bad you can’t teach kids this,” he said, and I wondered why he was thinking that.

“Really there’s only one infix, and it’s f***. Like in ‘absof***inglutely.’”

“Ahhh,” I said, “Like Ms. McDonough’s Valentine.”

I didn’t need to remind him of when he was making Valentine’s for his whole class and all of his teachers and he got to Ms. McDonough. He was doing an acrostic poem for her and needed a u adjective. We looked up a list of “positive u adjectives” and unf***withable was on the list. Fortunately and unfortunately, this was the perfect, if unusable adjective for his amazing teacher, one of my best friends, now gone.

You see, when your son’s teacher is his mom’s friend, an amazing meet-once-in-your-your-lifetime woman who was truly unf***withable, even before she battled cancer… you do contemplate letting your sixth-grader write unf***withable on his Valentine’s affirmation. (Instead you just text her the word.)

And, if you’re judging me about my kids’ language — which surely some of you are, at a certain point after going through things… you decide it’s okay for your teenagers to use the words they want to use. And you hope that maybe one day they might describe you and themselves as unf***withable too.

“Well yea,” H said. “But that isn’t really in infix. It isn’t interrupting a word in the same way.”

The conversation shifted a bit. We talked about our dog’s upcoming birthday, when suddenly H looked up from his phone,

“Oh my God.” He said, startling me.

“What now?” I asked him, not expecting his next query, and laughing as soon as he asked it with a lot of passion:

“What is your opinion on split infinitives?”

Part of Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life

I’m looking across the circle at family book club. Moms and dads and their kids are sitting together, and we are sharing out to the whole group.

The kids are quiet, shy in the way kids get when it’s evening and they are with their parents and teachers and principal, all in the school library.

A third-grader seems to want to say something, but she puts her head down, shoulders up, not sure if she wants to speak. Her mom smiles at her, encouraging.

There’s something about the exchange that takes me briefly back in time.

My daughter and I went to a book club together – a Mothers and daughters book club. We met at the library every so often. We talked about a book we had read, did a craft.

We didn’t always finish the book we were supposed to read, but we went, we did the craft, we talked.

I don’t remember the books, I have a sliver of memory of one or two of the crafts.

But, I can picture the photograph of us laughing during one of those book clubs – it hangs in my parent’s house. And, I remember the feeling: sitting next to my young daughter, encouraging her to speak.