Travels With Toddler

I’ve been to St. Louis so many times now, I’ve lost track of the number. Only a few other places, among those I haven’t lived in, have that distinction, such as Indianapolis and Kyoto. I went down to St. Louis on Thursday to attend my nephew Sam’s graduation from Washington University. He now holds a BS in Architecture from that institution, cum laude. Hard to believe he was once the wee one I taught, while babysitting him when he was a little less than a year old, how to open and close an audio cassette player.

The most direct route from metro Chicago to metro St. Louis is I-55. It’s easily broken into thirds, this drive. Bloomington/Normal is roughly one-third of the way, Springfield two-thirds, if you’re going south. Under ideal driving conditions, it takes a little less than five hours.

Conditions are never ideal, of course. Sitting in my back seat was an unpredictable two-year-old, my own wee one, Ann. Yuriko stayed behind to work, and Lilly to go to school, so it was Ann and me together on the long road. We took her on some longish drives in the summer of 2003, but she was an infant then, with simpler needs and less sophistication in noisemaking, disruptiveness and other toddler arts. So I had no idea how this trip was going to go down.

I’m glad to report that, on the whole, she traveled well. No extended crying. No biochemical mishaps en route. Only one major food spill, an overturned tube of potato chips. Make that two spills -- there was a yogurt incident just before the graduation ceremony, but that wasn’t on the highway. Her presence did mean, however, that I had to stop a number of times, both at rest stops and in a few towns along the way. I made the best of it, and in two cases at least, managed to entertain myself as well as Ann. More on that later.