Get in the Car

Yosemite Valley in the distance with JT by my side

“Mom, get in the car. Come meet me.”

That was the call.

JT was nearing the end of his cross-country drive home from Atlanta… a trip that had taken him through national parks, up mountains, across long stretches of highway, and on more hikes than I can count.

His last big stop was Yosemite.

And he wanted me to come.

My first thought was everything I had to do.

I had work scheduled with a producer. Work with an editor. Another meeting on the calendar. It was hot. I needed someone to take care of Winnie. And Yosemite wasn’t exactly around the corner.

There were a dozen perfectly reasonable reasons to say, I wish I could.

And then another thought came:

When was the last time my grown son called me and said, “Mom, get in the car”?

And how many more times will he?

Someday there will be a relationship. A marriage. Children. A career that takes him somewhere else. A life full of people and responsibilities that are beautifully his own.

This invitation was here now. So I started clearing the calendar. I moved the meetings. Figured out the dog. Rearranged the work. Then I took a picture of myself dangling my car keys and sent it to him as a little teaser. A few minutes later, I sent him my driving directions.

He called immediately.

“No way, Mom. Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I can’t wait.”

And just like that, I was going to Yosemite.

Three and a half hours later, I met him at the hotel.

We had dinner and then sat together playing gin rummy for about an hour and a half. Nothing extraordinary. And somehow, completely extraordinary.

The next morning we had breakfast and drove the hour and fifteen minutes into Yosemite Valley.

We walked. We hiked. We looked at waterfalls. We wandered through the old Ahwahnee Hotel, where I actually heard my son look around and say, “Wow. This would be a great place for a wedding reception.”

Well, hello.

We stood at the foot of El Capitan and stared up at something so enormous it makes you feel wonderfully small.

We took picture after picture of Half Dome.

And standing there with JT, I told him about another version of me who had once hiked up the cables to the top of Half Dome with his dad and my brother, Andy.

I told him stories about that climb. About his uncle. About Yosemite trips when I was a little girl.

Past and present seemed to be standing there together. And that’s what made those hours feel so precious. Because there had been a season not that long ago when JT seemed to need some distance.

He was finding his independence and figuring out his own life, as grown children are supposed to do. I understood that. But understanding something doesn’t mean you don’t feel it.

For the first time, I had felt a little space between us… and it scared me. I didn’t know whether it was simply part of growing up or the beginning of a new normal.

So there was something about driving around Yosemite with him, music playing, talking and laughing and telling stories, that felt like a return.

Not backward.

Not to childhood.

Just back to us.

Easy. Familiar. Connected.

On our way home, we made one more spontaneous stop at a little casino… it was just off the highway. JT looked at me. I looked at him. And at the same time we both said, “Yes.” I couldn’t remember the last time I had stepped foot in a casino. It was just another moment in this unplanned adventure that we were on.

And somehow, I still can’t believe this … we both walked out winners. JT looked at me and said, “Mom, that just paid for my whole trip across the country!”

I am certainly not suggesting gambling as a financial strategy… but I’ll say this, we sure had fun!

And then we drove home. The whole escapade lasted about 26 hours. Twenty-six hours.

I could so easily have missed them, because I was busy.

There was work to do. Meetings to keep. A dog to figure out. A long drive. A hot day. A hundred little practical reasons that all sounded completely legitimate.

And sometimes they are.

We can’t drop everything every time someone calls.

But every once in a while, life puts something in front of us that feels different.

An opening.

I think our job is simply to recognize it.

It’s like a kaleidoscope and how the pieces inside don’t necessarily change. What changes is the way we turn them toward the light.

Maybe that’s what happened here.

I just turned the kaleidoscope a little.

And suddenly, the thing catching the light wasn’t my calendar.

It was my son saying:

Mom, come meet me.

There will be other meetings.

There will be other deadlines.

There will even, God willing, be other trips with my son.

But there will never be these particular 26-hours again.

There will never be this version of JT, driving home from Atlanta with everything he owns packed into his truck, hiking his way across the country and figuring out what comes next.

And there will never be this exact version of me, either.

His mom, standing beside him beneath El Capitan.

Remembering my brother.

Telling old stories.

Playing gin rummy.

Listening to good music.

Laughing over an improbable casino win.

And feeling something between us settle back into place.

I’m so grateful I didn’t say, I wish I could.

I’m so grateful I grabbed the keys.

Because sometimes the most important thing on our schedule…

was never on the schedule at all.