Avoid the Mundane

My childhood was crammed with instances of parental insistence that children need to look beyond the mundane - to find the adventure in life. When I was 2, I sat on a buffalo. When I was 9, I rode in a howdah atop an elephant. When I was 14, I walked ’tween decks of the U.S.S. Constitution. When I was 17, I spent the night in General Israel Putnam's rope-mattressed bed.  

One exceptionally non-mundane event occurred when I was waaay beyond childhood and adolescence. In fact, I was well into late middle-age!

I had to have a hysterectomy. The surgeon told me I would have to spend about a week “being very careful” about picking up “heavy objects,” which Dr. C. defined as “anything heavier than an empty aluminum frying pan.” When I told my parents I was scheduled for surgery and a week of  “moving slowly and carefully,” they immediately made plans to come to Florida and “take care of you, honey.”

The surgery went well, though it lasted 3 hours longer than Dr. C. had forecasted, which caused Mom nearly to expire in the waiting room. I was told he apologized profusely while explaining that the mass he removed was larger than he’d anticipated. Anyway, the day I was released from the hospital, my Dad drove us to my house. As we left the hospital parking lot, he asked what I wanted to eat, I directed him to my favorite Chinese restaurant. We parked and exited the car (very, very slowly and carefully), I was moving well until Dad asked, “Why are we eating at a place called ‘Uncle Pus’?” I nearly tore my stitches and staples laughing, then, explained the apostrophe was missing from Uncle Pu’s.

I had scheduled the surgery for my Christmas vacation (I would use fewer sick days), so I had a real live Christmas tree because I wanted the scent of the season to help me recover. It did, mellowing out everyone in the house. That must have been the reason behind what happened the day before Mom, Dad and I left for their home in North Carolina and the rest of my 6 weeks recuperation. Some of my students had come over to break down and remove the tree. They left when my Dad announced I was looking too tired. Then he astounded Mom and me when he appeared from the garage with my vacuum  cleaner and began to eradicate the pine needles on the floor, because he was afraid I might try to do it myself. 

Since I could only travel for a few hours at a time, Dad took the literal scenic route from Middleburg to Charlotte turning a seven hour drive into two full days of mini-adventures. We spent the night at a motel next to the fruitcake bakery/factory in Claxton, Georgia, stopped to see the Smallest Church in America in South Newport, Georgia, and shopped at an honest-to-God Woolworth’s 5 and 10 cent store in South Carolina.

That time my parents came south to baby their fifty-plus-year-old child reaffirmed what I learned during my childhood in Danvers: Every day holds the possibility of adventure. Dad has been dead for several years, but he would be heartened to know I am still trying to avoid the mundane and finding scenic routes through life.