Ah, the good ole road trip. A road trip at twenty is a little different than fifty-four, or is it? At Peace and Healing I often stress the importance of letting your hair down, do not get stuck in age stereotypes or the rut of complacency. My fiancee and I recently took a road trip for her primitive design passion. We both get a little stir crazy in a nine hour drive, minimal stops and the repetitious head lights. I mean, let’s face it how many time can you count the headlights on the highway ala Elton John. On the way back home through Ohio we had to stop at a roadside candy shop called Coon’s Candy. This roadside attraction touts over three hundred types of candy and they stayed true to their word. Candy from the current era, their home made specialties as well as candy from the fifties and sixties. We are talking BB-Bats, Sixlets, Malta Milk circles and candy cigarettes. Yes, that chalky candy that imitated cigarettes which was as psychologicaly detrimental as candy pellets in a medicine bottle. Many years ago they were taken off the market, needles to say, I do not need to say why. Never the less, into the vehicle, placed in drive, a small smirk from each of us and an offer of a candy cigarette as we sipped on our root beer, listening to folk music, heading to Bowling Green, Ohio.
Laughter, acting child like is a necessity if one is to stay healthy, young at heart and the need for our adult children to think our elevator does not go all the way to the top floor. I am so happy that our spontaneity, our weird ways of how we see life veer off the interstate to a bumpy country road at times. Yes, we can take it too far, but we never get stuck in the mundane mud of life. Oh, we have our moments when the skirt of self esteem gets stepped on, but we always converse and work it out. Communication, commitment, and humility, as well as our child like impulsivity adds the mortar to our realtioonship. Never take your self too seriously! When that occurs somewhere, someplace, in time you will be given a mirror of your ineptness and not know how to handle it, except become defensive.
Relationships, long relationships are learned through time. An area I have struggled with due to my inability to see health and a desire to fix the wounded woman. This is a classic scenario of the sexually abused. I thank perseverance, karma and my ability to risk to seek happiness. I thank my want to stop at “Coon’s Candy store in Ohio. Most importantly, I am fortunate to have a life partner that is as goofy if not goofier than I. It fosters the closeness. We could of bitched and moaned about the drive, the setting sun to the West blinding us, or the long drive. We did none of that. We sought out fun unconsciously and spontaneously.Try it. You will not regret it. Some call it “getting freaky,” others call it child-like, I call it “normal.” Well, I have to to keep my own sanity.
