John McCloone

My kids have changed. First of all, they aren’t kids anymore. They’re adults.
It used to be at this time of the year, we’d be scheming some kind of a family trip. Now, our travels are to see our grown children.
Back in the day, we’d pack everyone in the minivan and drive. In the good old days, you had to come up with schemes and games to keep the kids from battling. Or, sometimes we turned to Dramamine. Yes, when necessary, we did drug our children. We had a couple prone to carsickness, and it was best for all of us if they were brought back to consciousness when the final destination was near. My son grew up thinking that anywhere you wanted to go in America was a car ride and a nap away.
There are things you have to do as a parent sometimes to keep the peace. Every so often, the kids find the pictures of me from a long car journey after they had done their best to make me look beautiful. Tensions were high in the back seat on day three in the minivan, so I brokered a peace agreement. I accepted their terms, which included covering me with lipstick and mascara.
It was probably after that adventure that keeping them sleeping sounded like a better idea.
The last trip we took when they were all around college age, there were no arguments in the vehicle, because that would have required my kids to be conscious. I didn’t sedate them this time. They did it all on their own.
They fell asleep before we hit a main highway. There was a little talk about who was sitting where, and then a flurry of text messaging before the ear buds went in and each entered their own worlds.
I enjoyed the countryside and did my own reminiscing. Road trips have come a long way since I was a kid and I and seven siblings would be crammed every which way into the back of a station wagon, with my father ruling the vehicle with his iron fist. Your proximity to him was an indication of your behavior on the trip. More often than not, I will admit, we were close companions.
There was far less to occupy a child of any age’s attention back then, so I give my parents a lot of credit. Plus, they never drugged us.