Special Mom’s blog

When you move to a new country and you do not have a family and the weekends become free. You get together with a few friends, drive to a tourist spot, take pictures, print it out and proudly mail them to your parents in India who in turn show them off to the family.

Then your parents visit and you take them out noted locations and they are happy and proud of their kids.

That is how our road trips in the US began. Every trip I consider them as privilege and I have had fun in every one of them. 

I have blogged about most of my trip the past two years but there are two I would consider notable. One was a trip we drove from Boston to Montreal. It was our first trip across the border and the excitement was real. I had a super hyper 8 year old and a 6 month old toddler. Unlike the crossings near Niagara Falls, this was an empty border crossing and as we drove saw French signs and felt as if we were in Europe. It happened nearly two decades ago and how fast the time flies. I think this paved the way for our other long drives. The pure Canadian air we enjoyed at a botanical garden would have been our motivation too.

Pandemic showed us my boy could tolerate longer drives and we drove from Wisconsin in the Midwest to Washington DC in the East coast. Sault Ste Marie in Canada to Dallas in the South. Necessity is the mother of invention and we invented fun in a different way.

So when my parents came a year back (or should I say two years back), we drove to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. That is when my Mom commented how good my special one was in these long drives. He is “with us” on these trips, is what she meant. Yes, she remembered the early meltdowns. We still do have “autism moments”, but we have come a long way. We celebrated my Dad’s birthday on this trip. We avoided crowds and did not do much due to the virus, but it was great to be together inside a van after a long time. A time well spent.

The past few days I have been listening to my Guru’s bhajan on YouTube and it has animation that shows Lord Shiva and Parvathi taking their kids Karthikeya and Ganesha on a road trip. I am just going to give the link here. It felt so close to home. I hope you enjoy the same.