When we got married we thought we knew this but it came into sharp focus on our honeymoon.
After our Thursday wedding Jana and I had our first reception on Saturday in Idaho. The next day we headed on our honeymoon, down to Oakland, California, then, after seeing a few sights, off to the Pacific Coast Highway, the famed California Route 1.
We entered the PCH just south of San Jose, where we had toured the infamous Winchester Mystery House. We drove for a time and just at dusk we pulled off the highway into the beautiful Big Sur campground where I pitched our romantic little two-person backpacking tent by the light of our Chevy Malibu's headlights.
The next morning we headed south. It was a breathtaking drive where pine-draped mountains plunged into the arguing blue-green pacific ocean. It seemed that just when you thought you had seen the most beautiful view imaginable, just around the bend (and there were plenty of those) was an even more photogenic vista.
My right brain was awash with wonder and I think I must have pulled off at nearly every turnout on the windy way. I kept commenting to my lovely, blushing bride the wonders of the scene and assumed her growing silence signaled her wordless wonder.
One noteworthy fact about this stretch of the highway is that once you are committed to the road there is no turning back. There are no turnoffs or alternate routes, no shortened bypasses and no destinations other than the road itself.
Finally, after nearly 300 winding, up-and-down, looking-over-the-edge, stopping-at-every-turnout mile we came to the first turnoff of the road at San Simeon and the Hearst Castle. I pulled into a parking area and said, "Sweetheart, let's go take a look." It was here, on our honeymoon, in a parking lot on the Pacific Coast Highway, that I learned of another valuable difference in our natures. And that is the purpose of a road.
To me a road was a path to adventure and discovery ... something to be explored and savored.
To Jana a road was simply a way to get from one place to another ... preferably the most direct route between two geolocations.
And so I learned, compelled to be content to look at the opulent newspaper tycoon's monument to excess through the quarter-fed telescope in the parking lot, before jumping into the car without another stop between there and my parent's home some five hours later.
This weekend Jana and I enjoyed a wonderful trip to Utah for my family's annual reunion up Spanish Fork Canyon. We left after work Thursday, just the two of us since our girls couldn't get off work. What a wonderful and fun time we had catching up with nearly 200 family members we see all to infrequently. As we headed home Monday we had a delightful book that Jana read to me as we drove and talked our way home. The only stop we made was a potty stop between Snowville and Sweetzer Summit.
As we neared Boise I noticed that the time was 7:00 pm – the time Chanel, my oldest daughter, gets off work and heads for home. I thought it would be nice to stop in and say "Hi", tell her about our adventurous weekend and make yet one more lifebond in our family tapestry. But the lesson I had learned these nearly 34 years ago has become so deeply ingrained that I debated for 3 miles whether I dared ask Jana if she would mind our stopping when we were nearly in view or our journey's destination.
Finally I dared.
"Jana, would it be all right if we pulled off and visited Chanel for a few minutes, since we're so close?"
(Breath held.)
"Sure."
So I called Chanel, caught her enroute home from work and asked if we could stop by and see her on our way home.
Loving things are often the personal preferences we choose to yield as we learn to live and love together. On the surface they may seem small, almost insignificant, but those small compromises of preference, whether freely offered or patiently proffered, should not be taken for granted, but acknowledged and valued for the loving gifts they are.
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IF YOU WOULD, PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO COMMENT ON ONE OF THE LOVING THINGS, SMALL OR GRAND, THAT YOU HAVE RECEIVED FROM SOMEONE IMPORTANT TO YOU.
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Ah, a road that get you from one point to another. That was ingrained from our dad--look at the beauty as you whiz by 'cause we can't stop, gotta get there, gotta get there.
ReplyDeleteYes, I often hear the echoes of dad's focused perspective. I guess the trick is to draw from the strengths of both routes. Haven't figured out how to do that yet.
ReplyDeleteJana is a lot like Grandpa Joe. But stopping to visit kids is different than looking at Scenic or tourist stuff. I"ve traveled with Uncle Richard and Uncle Greyson and learned what fun it is to relax and stop and enjoy things.
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