When my wife and I dropped off our youngest daughter, Rose, at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, we knew we'd have to do the six hour each way trip this spring to bring her and her belongings back home. We didn't realize this trip would be two months earlier than expected due to her school shutting down because of the corona virus pandemic. However, that's exactly how it played out, and on Wednesday, March 18, Rose and I got up at 6:00 in the morning and headed due north, so she could empty her dorm room and continue her education on line from her childhood bedroom at the southwestern end of the state.
The first several hours were quiet; neither one of us normally has a lot to say that early in the morning. As we got north of Bangor, we lost radio reception, so, she hooked up her phone and she introduced me to Hozier, an Irish folk/pop singer. She has great taste in music! Eventually the conversation started, but it was a pretty mellow first half of the trip.
We arrived at Fort Kent at noon, and went to her dorm room with lunch from Subway- there is no eating in happening right now. Several trips from the room to the parking lot were needed to get everything into the borrowed pickup truck we were driving, then there was a two hour wait for the staff person to come by and sign her out. I don't really know why it took so long, since the campus was virtually deserted, but it allowed me to catch a brief nap before hitting the road to drive six hours south.
Thats when the fun really started. She switched her phone playlist from Hozier to Melanie, a favorite of both of ours. To fill the long drive home, we talked about music, faith, her church at college, and what Jesus really meant when he said, "You are the salt of the earth." Then we briefly pretended to be pirates sailing our ship to attack the car in front of us. She is one of those rare people who can go from serious, deep conversation to nonsensical chatter in the blink of a eye.
As the trip dragged on, a common debate erupted once again. I thought the car was too hot and she thought it was too cold. She'd turn the heat up, so I retaliated by opening the window. This is a "game" we play often, and in the end there's never a clear winner.
This 14 hour day was long, but a nice reprieve from all the attention the corona virus has demanded. There were some reminders, of course, like the fact that we could only drive through for food, and public bathrooms were hard to find (and of course, the purpose of the trip to begin with), but all in all it allowed us to spend some time reconnecting and, if not forgetting the pandemic, at least putting it aside for a while.