Ordinary Days By Lauren Denton: Silver lining of rush hour traffic

Having lived in Homewood for most of the last 22 years, I’ve gotten a wee bit spoiled when it comes to dealing with traffic. And by that, I mean I rarely have to deal with it. 

Sure, there are times when there’s a stalled car or a wreck that backs up traffic, or I’m trying to get to an appointment early in the morning or late in the afternoon. But in general, it rarely takes more than 15 minutes to get anywhere I need to go, and usually it’s more like 5 or 10. 

But every Thursday afternoon, I get to experience the wonder of 280 traffic at its worst: rush hour at the end of the day. The silver lining is that I get to do it with my 11-year-old, Sela. Every Thursday at 5 p.m., she has climbing team at High Point Climbing, which is, as we all say, “way down 280.” It clocks in at only eight miles away, but it can easily take 45 minutes if we don’t leave the house at exactly the right time. 

A recent traffic study determined that the number of cars on U.S. 280 doubles to 5,200 during rush hour—and I think we see every single one of them on our weekly trek to High Point.

But, as I said, the silver lining of this weekly trek is that I get to spend the time with Sela. Sometimes she reads or draws, but more often, we play little games we’ve come up with to pass the time. 

We ask each other fun questions: If you could live anywhere, where would you choose? If you could have any job, what would it be? If you could pick any one of these cars to drive, which would you pick? We watch for nature — stark white tree trunks scattered among the brown, hawks flying high overhead and patches of wildflowers peeking between the trees and nosing up on the medians. We look for interesting license plates — we’ve seen GIGIx2, TURTLES and XPENSIV, and we’re always hoping we’ll see the same ones on different days.

And then there’s the conversation that happens around the games. Sometimes we talk about friends, and friendship in general. Sometimes we talk about something hard or funny or sad that happened at school that day. Sometimes she tells me a new word she heard someone say at school and she’ll ask me what it means. Usually, I know what the word means and I tell her the truth — sometimes prompting interesting and hilarious conversations about inappropriate words — but other times I have no idea and I have to ask my 14-year-old when we get home. (It’s so strange when you have to ask your kid to tell you what some new word means.)

People love to tell parents what life will be like with tweens and teens. We’re bombarded with horror stories of hormones and slammed doors, of how they’ll stop talking to us or never come out of their bedrooms or want nothing to do with us. It’s easy for parents to fear these years like a coming storm. But what I’ve happily discovered with our tween and teen is that as they grow up, our love for and appreciation of them has grown as well. 

Of course, every age has its own beauty and difficulties, and young kids are amazingly loveable and interesting, with their endless curiosity and adventures and discoveries. But our experience has been that as our girls have gotten older, we’re able to enjoy them in new ways. 

Their interests get … well, more interesting. Conversations change as maturity grows, subject matters deepen and expand, and we can talk and laugh with them about things that a few years ago, we would have shied away from. They ask bigger and harder questions, and we have to dig deep to come up with answers that satisfy — and sometimes have the courage to admit we don’t have the answer. One thing I’m sure of is that their dad and I are learning about life right alongside them.

Driving home from High Point two and a half hours later, everything’s different. Depending on the time of year, the sky is either darkened with stars, slashed with the pink and orange of sunset or coated in the purple hues of twilight. We’re both quieter on the drive home — Sela because she’s just spent two hours laughing and running and lifting herself up and down walls, and me because I’m winding down, thinking of a shower and pajamas and a good book. Our conversation is usually slower and more scattered — a funny thing someone said in climbing class, anticipation for the coming weekend or a random story from earlier in the week we forgot to talk about. 

All things considered, the tween and teen years have been solidly good for us. All of them have been good, really, from newborn right up until this moment, and I pray the future will bring us much more — everything wonderful and confusing and hard and hilarious. But for now, I remind myself to cherish these days and these moments, even if some of them are spent in bumper-to-bumper traffic behind a jacked-up truck with XPENSIV on the license plate. I have time with my girl, time away from chores and homework and dinner prep, time to watch and listen and breathe.

When I’m not writing about my family and our ordinary life, I write novels, go to the grocery store, and vacuum dog hair. You can find my books in stores, online, and locally at Little Professor Bookshop. You can reach me by email at Lauren@LaurenKDenton.com, visit my website LaurenKDenton.com, or find me on Instagram @LaurenKDentonBooks or Facebook ~LaurenKDentonAuthor.