Yesterday was last minute get-ready-for-college shopping day with Liz. After breakfast among Harley riders and fashionable east siders at the Cafe Hollander, we headed to Greenfields to look for posters. In case you haven't been there, it's the kind of store where I'd have bought flowing skirts, incense, and posters for whatever Madison apartment I had in 1970.

 Liz is a big Salvador Dali fan. This is very cool, but there is Dali, and there is Dali. This is the sort of Dali that appeals to Liz.

And there are roommates, and there are roommates.

"Liz. Don't you think you might want to get to know your roommate a little before you put up a poster that might be, you know. . ."

"SCARY?" she completed my sentence. "You think this would be better?" unscrolling a bold red-and-black floor-to-ceiling Che Guevara banner and looking at me with feigned innocence.

"Erm, well, it's very. . . arresting. But the colors might be a little off-putting. Besides, it might not go with her stuff, and she might care about that." This is, by decree of the big dorm room furnishings purveyors, a brown and pink and green year with lots of orange, purple, and teal thrown in. A very un-revolutionary colors year. I don't even have to go where the politics might lead this discussion.

 "How about this," I ask, finding an unusually sweet Dali with butterflies and no naked bodies or Blessed Virgins or melting clocks. A lifted eyebrow is reply enough, but my daughter is trying to keep me calm and so she says, kindly and gently, "it's just not me, Mom." 

She finds something that's imaginative, thought-provoking, and unlikely to make her roommate call for an exorcism. I am relieved. I buy her two beautiful scarves and we head to the car. There, Liz is captive, and I can waterboard her with 18 years worth of pent-up advice, praise, and Mom-neurosis. 

"I'm channeling Sally Field again, right?" I ask, coming up for air myself.  In case you haven't seen Brothers and Sisters, Field's character, Nora Walker, is so much like me that even I can see it when my kids point and hoot during a familiar scene of excessive, sure-to-be-thwarted, mother love.

Time to shut up and turn on the radio. Strains of the Dixie Chicks:

I took my love and took it down, climbed a mountain and turned around, and I saw my reflection in a snow covered hill, well the landslide brought it down

. . . can I sail through the changing ocean tides, can I handle the changing seasons of my life?

. . .Well, I've been afraid of changing cause I built my life around you, but time makes you bolder; children get older, I'm getting older too. .

I'm about to launch into my usual exegesis on why the original Stevie Nicks version  of Landslide is superior when the song hits me and the tears start. "This is about us, isn't it?"

Liz, always much wiser than I am, nods. Later, she will let me hug her longer than she has ever let me hug her. 

This morning, she packed her dad's truck. I handed off a plate of zucchini bars with caramel frosting for the trip, and they were off to Steven's Point.

Take this love and take it down, children. Climb a mountain.  But now and then, turn around.

With the trip meter on, it's easy to pretend I haven't just rolled the odometer over 100,000 miles on the dinged but reliable Nissan. But even the lower mileage meter's in the thousands, what with trips to campuses, family visits, and job interviews. Sometimes, you just can't get away with driving less. And even if you do, chances are your life isn't staying in the same place.

Last weekend the kids and I went to Oshkosh to see my sister's family before Liz and Geo head off for school. Geo goes to Madison this weekend, Liz goes to Stevens Point the following one.  The dual departures are just days away, and I'm still in denial.

We hit the road early--or what passes for early with 18-year-olds. There was a little crankiness during the rousting/dog walking/breakfasting period: "hurry up" is no one's favorite phrase. But we finally got into the car.

I'd imagined a charming 80 mile conversation, the kids talking about their lives and aspirations, a joke now and then, maybe a song here and there, me imparting a piece of life wisdom so wonderful that the kids nod with affectionate gratitude, and finally the excited recognition of the "almost there" marker, the buffaloes at Glacial Ridge Farms.

As the kids might say "Mom, what were you smoking?!"

Instead, Geo said "I'm tired. You drive, okay?" Liz claimed the stretch-out territory in the back seat, and Geo reclined his passenger side seat as far as it could go. Head sets were on, and before we hit Menomomee Falls, both kids were out. 

It took a few miles of mostly rural roadside before I lost the old "this isn't how I'd planned it" resentment. The sky was clear, the fields green with short corn and gold with tall grain, and I was driving with my babies on board. Little soft snorey sounds escaped as they slept to the car's hum and vibrations, just as they always had. How many contented miles have I driven, luxuriating in the presence of my children near me, safely strapped in, and, for as long as the car was in motion, not yowling? For this hour and a half, I had them all back.

Yesterday was another fine day for a trip of the same length. I had a job interview in Madison, the second one. It was both fun and intense. I'd forgotten to eat lunch, so I wandered down the construction zone that's Madison's State Street and grabbed some pud thai to eat at the wayside on the way home.

I sat at the picnic table in my job interview dress, trying to manage the noodles with the spoon the restaurant had packed and wishing I'd picked up chopsticks on my way out. For 50 some years I've been eating at wayside picnic tables with family and friends, and those memories joined me. Then, the peanuts usually came in the form of peanut butter and jelly.  But other things haven't changed: the farm on one side, highway on the other, the cleanness of Wisconsin's facilities, the sense of being somewhere safe on the way home.

If you are still long enough, something wonderful will present itself. A young buck stepped out of the woods to eat his field corn, and we shared our dinners in companionable silence.

Then it was back in the car, back to Wauwatosa, back home, where everything is the same and everything has changed.