The first seven (yikes!) posts in this series can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
As my eighth day on the road began, I was greeted by a text message from my wife stating that she and Sophie had, indeed, made it safely back to Ontario and slept well in their familiar beds. Sophie had already gotten up with the sun and had left for school to attend her special organizational meetings. My wife was having a slower start to the day but was planning to head into her own school and begin organizing for her upcoming school year later that morning. By the time I had woken up, Leah had already gotten up and had gone to have some breakfast at the cafeteria with her new friends. Now it was my turn to start my day. Even though I was doing so alone, there was a peacefulness about it all. We had pulled it off. We had successfully survived driving as a family for twenty six hours in a cramped and crowded car. In that time, we had gotten everywhere we needed to, saw everyone we wanted to see and still managed to, not only get Leah moved in on time but also get Keri and Sophie on a plane and safely back to our home again, too. As I settled into my own breakfast of bacon and eggs, I reflected upon the fact that I had grown tired of eating bacon and eggs in restaurants for breakfast. It was time for me to get back home, too. Today would be the start of that process. But first, before that could happen, I still had one precious day left with Leah. Time to put this baby to bed, as I like to say. Let’s get this day underway.
After having moved into her dorm room, Leah and all other new students were encouraged to take part in a week-long series of orientation and welcome activities put on by the university. On this particular day, Leah had a full slate of activities that she wanted to attend or felt an obligation to do so. Thus, before we parted the previous day, she reiterated to me that she would not be available to see me until late afternoon. She apologized for that. She needn’t have done so. Her mother and I both were hoping that our first born child would lose herself in her new university world the same way she did on that first day of kindergarten, way back when. On that day, when the school bell rang, there were no tears. Leah simply got into line with the other children, followed her teacher’s instructions to head inside and never looked back once the whole time until she disappeared from view. Now, here at university, she was moving forward on her own, as well. Good for her. As for me, I was more than fine to amuse myself until suppertime.
With most of my day before me, I had arranged to have lunch with two friends from my own high school days back in Halifax on the waterfront. Prior to meeting them, I strolled the boardwalk, did some shopping, had a coffee and sat in a deck chair and simply enjoyed watching the action in the harbour. It was all very relaxing. My lunch with my childhood pals Lori and Andrea (who both live in the area) was delightful. We hadn’t seen each other for almost forty years so there was lots of catching up to do. The food and the company were terrific! Before I knew it, early afternoon had arrived and it was time to make my way back out of the city again and return to the Annapolis Valley and find Leah.
As I drove into town and prepared to park, I noticed a familiar figure walking down the sidewalk. It was Leah! I pulled in beside her. Apparently she had won a draw for a school ball hat and was heading to pick it up. After she got her hat, she jumped into the car and we headed off to the neighbouring town of New Minas. This town is a ten minute drive south of the university. It is the place where all of the chain-type department stores and restaurants are located. I took Leah to Walmart and instructed her to fill the cart with whatever she wanted because it would be a long time before she had the luxury of driving back and forth in a car with her shopping bags. That she did. Then we went to Boston Pizza for supper. It was nice to share a meal with Leah and catch up on her day in person, just the two of us. It is funny how some of the most emotionally significant moments of our lives often happen within the context of ordinary events but, just like that, our meal ended and it was time to drive Leah back to her dorm and for us to say our own personal farewells.
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, regardless of the gravity of the changes that were happening to our family, I had made it my business to remain as stoic and Spock-like as possible throughout this entire process. Someone had to drive with clear eyes. Someone had to map out our separations from the ones we love with so much cold calculation. Now here I stood outside Leah’s dormitory waiting for her to return from having taken her shopping bags upstairs. It was growing darker as the sun was setting. The university grounds were still. There was nobody around to see me standing there, awaiting the return of my first-loved child. She eventually rounded the corner. It was time. Big, emotionally- strong Dad reached out for a final hug and an offer of words such as “I love you” and “I am so proud of you”, only to find my throat constricting and the words inaudible. In some weird way, I think the emotions of the moment getting the better of me pleased Leah somehow. In those final moments, it fell to her to reassure me that it would all be ok. And it was. In a replay of kindergarten, she informed me that she was meeting her friends for an event that the university had scheduled for that evening and had to get going. One final hug and she disappeared back around the corner and was gone. I was alone in the darkness in the shadow of her dormitory. The air was still. The street lights were starting to come on. It was truly time for me to go.
EPILOGUE:
Needless to say, as I left Leah that evening I was still faced with the daunting prospect of having to drive all the way back to Ontario by myself. I will spare you a separate post chronicling that stage of my journey. But I will mention a couple of things. I decided to head back through New England, rather than retracing my steps and driving home via New Brunswick and Quebec. The drive through New England was five hours shorter and, believe me when I say, if I could shave some time off of the drive home, after all the driving that had already been done then, sign me up!
When I left Leah that evening, I drove an hour south of her to a town called Digby. The reason for that was that the next morning I had made a reservation to board the Yarmouth to Bar Harbour, Maine ferry. Yarmouth is an hour south of Digby. With the ferry scheduled to sail at 9:30 in the morning, staying in Digby would afford me plenty of time to get to the ferry. The CAT high speed ferry was wonderful. The onboard seating was extremely comfortable. By this time in my travels, it was Day #9 so I was happy just to sit for a few hours in the comfy chairs and enjoy the panoramic views. A seven hour drive to Burlington, Vermont awaited me upon my arrival in Bar Harbour, Maine. Passing through customs was not a problem. I guess they figured I was only smuggling dirty laundry so how dangerous could I be and they let me enter the U.S. without a second glance. The drive to Burlington, Vermont took me through the Adirondack Mountains. What a lovely drive that was! Unlike New Brunswick and all of its tree-lined mountains, the drive through the Adirondacks seemed better planned out by those who built the highways. Many times I was driving under trees that reached across the road to each other, forming archways through which the sun dappled. The whole drive was made in radio silence. I did try to find a rock station or even a classical station as I wound my way through those mountains but all I could find, even there, were Top 40 stations and Country music stations. As I pulled in for supper in Gorham, New Hampshire, I tried one final time to find a radio station I could tolerate. I swear that the first song I heard there was “I Had Some Help” by Post Malone and Morgan Wallen. I was done with the uniformity of these stations and shut the radio off for the rest of the drive home. Not having my musical act together for the drive home was one oversight I would not make again.
In any case, by 8:30 that evening I had made it to Burlington, Vermont. The next day I was up and at it early and was having lunch in Cornwall, Ontario by noon, having crossed the border once again with dirty laundry and no hassles from border agents. Overall, the drive from Nova Scotia back through New England had been a very relaxing one. I am someone who has always been comfortable living in the space between my ears. So, being alone with my thoughts as I drove through such nice scenery brought with it a sense of comfort that I didn’t know I had been missing. It also gave me time to think about all that we had just been through as a family. I am proud of us all. My wife and I have spent the better part of the last eighteen years trying to be good parents. As I drove along, I reflected upon how wonderful I think both Leah and Sophie have turned out so far. That each girl has their own personality and interests is excellent. That they pull together so effortlessly when the situation calls for it, as it did in this scenario, is even better. We couldn’t ask for better daughters.
This brings me back to music, as it often does. When I first began writing about music on this blog, I did so by writing about the Canadian band The Tragically Hip. Like all bands that manage to stay together for many years, the members of The Hip transformed as time passed and they grew into older versions of themselves. They married. They became fathers. The priorities of a life built around touring and recording music began to evolve. Many of the songs they recorded and released in the second half of their career centred upon matters of family and things like health and parenting and of love. At one point, lead singer Gord Downie began releasing solo records with a group of friends from other bands that he called The Country of Miracles. One such solo album was entitled Coke Machine Glow. On that album was a song called “Trick Rider”. It is a song about parenting. Specifically, it is a song about watching your children grow up and head off into the world (and all that doing so entails). I wrote a post about it years ago that I am going to reprint for you in a moment. Even though Leah and Sophie were much younger when that post was first written, I knew the moment I wrote it that one day Gord Downie’s lyrics were going to ring true for me. One day, it would be my turn and my wife’s turn to stand aside while a child of ours stepped away from us into the sunshine and headed out into the world. As has been the case throughout this entire ten-day road trip for me, the songs that made up my soundtrack of this experience played silently in my head. The song that helped me make it back home was “Trick Rider”. Here is that post.
****Originally posted in 2019.
This is one post in a series. Each post will focus on one song by the Canadian rock n’ roll band The Tragically Hip. I am a fan, not an expert. The thoughts expressed in these posts are my own, with the following two exceptions: I have drawn inspiration and knowledge from a book entitled The Never Ending Present by Michael Barclay. I have, also, learned much from a website dedicated to Hip fans entitled The Hip Museum. I will give credit to either source when applicable.
This is a bit of a cheat on my part because “Trick Rider” is not actually a Tragically Hip song. It came about as a result of a solo project by Gord Downie and was featured on an album called Coke Machine Glow. “Trick Rider” is a beautiful song that, for my money, is one of the best songs ever written about the emotion parents feel watching their children grow up. By mid-career, Downie had entered a stage of his life where family became more important than ever and making a difference in the real world became his calling card as a performer. This song is quiet and slow and is what I would have wanted to write for my girls if I had even half of his writing chops.
Being a parent changes everything.
“I’ll be your friend, your last refuge
When things get weird and weird breaks huge
I’ll stroke your hair, I’ll dry your cheeks
When failures come and no one speaks.”
For this album, Gord played with a backing band called The Country of Miracles. It is Julie Dorion *(from the band Eric’s Trip) whose lovely harmonies you can hear in the background of this song as it plays. I think it is important to state that like all of us, Gord Downie lived a multi-faceted life. He loved his family. He pursued his poetry. He immersed himself in Indigenous culture. He had friends beyond those four other guys in The Hip. These “other friends” were important to Downie’s sense of self, as well as to his creative impulses. It is a credit to everyone in The Hip that solo projects and collaborations with other musicians were welcomed as necessary for the self-actualization of all involved. Some fans worried that the fact that Gord was playing with a new band meant that his old band was being replaced. But as “Trick Rider” shows so well, there is beauty and wonder all around us. The important thing is being open to joy that springs from new sources. We are all richer when we embrace the tapestry that is Life.
As always, I thank you for visiting my blog and taking the time to read this post. Your comments regarding “Trick Rider”, Gord’s solo projects, the adventure that is parenting or your thoughts on collaboration, creativity and where we draw our inspiration from, are all welcome in the comment box below.
Thanks to Gord for creating such a wonderful song. Fatherhood is awesome! 🙂
The link to the video for the song “Trick Rider” by Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here. *(The lyrics appear in the comment section of this video).
The link to the official website for Gord Downie (as a solo artist) can be found here.
CONCLUSION: Sophie and her friends did a bang-up job of being leaders that first day of school and have done so again at several school spirit events since. We are proud of her. My wife is off to a good start with her school year as well. She is a well-regarded leader and role model for others in her school community. While she wishes she was still traveling and living for the adventure that such activity brings, I know that she continues to draw satisfaction from her role helping others to have better days just by being herself. As for Leah, she showers regularly, does laundry weekly and has managed to feed herself appropriately. We are relieved that she has settled in so quickly. We are proud of her determination to carve out a new and independent life for herself, even though she thoroughly enjoyed the safety, comfort and security of the life she left behind in Ontario. Good things come from hard work and Leah is working hard and doing well. We are looking forward to seeing her again when the holidays arrive and she comes back home. As for me, I am safely back home and find myself alone in the house as everyone else has gone to school for the day. When I am finished typing these words, my plan is to crank my tunes and enjoy the rest of my morning. No need to live inside of my head any longer.
I love my family.
Life is good.
***As always, all original content contained within this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2024 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com
Live long and prosper MacInnes family ❤️
Sam3 to you and yours. 👍❤️