9 Days to Go: Pebble Art, Boulder Groceries, and The Momentum of Love
It is Monday morning, and the countdown has officially reached nine days.
Yesterday was Matt’s 53rd birthday. If I’m being honest, it felt a little muted, shadowed by the towering medical reality on our doorstep. But we all showed up, leaned in, and did our best to wrap him in warmth. At noon, we hopped on FaceTime with the kids: Ben calling in from Austin, Jacob and Kiara from Grand Junction, and Abby from Boulder. (Tricia was up in the air, doing what she does best, flying with her flight students.)
The kids went in together on a group gift that hit the exact right note: an Aura digital frame for the RV, lighter and sleeker than our home model, already syncing photos from all their lives straight to our dashboard, along with color-changing string lights for the awning. I jumped on the camper theme, too. I gave him a lightweight faux hanging plant for the cabin, a sharp new prep knife for his Blackstone griddle, and a piece of pebble art depicting two figures and a dog sitting on a log, looking toward the peaks and a campfire. Handwritten along the bottom are the words “Volume 2: Open Roads.” A quiet promise for the other side of this canyon.
By afternoon, we took our vehicles to the wash, standing side-by-side in the hot sun scrubbing road grit off the truck and our Mustang, shaking off the weight and getting ready to roll.
And then the day took a sharp, predictable turn.
Another FaceTime call came in from Abby. She was in tears – sick, exhausted, going on five days stuck in bed, and desperate for parental comfort. All the logical boundaries I had carefully drawn the day before evaporated. Guilt, or more accurately, the primal instinct to show up for your hurting child, won out. Within an hour, Matt and I were at the grocery store loading up bags of nourishing food for the week, pointing the truck toward Boulder.
It certainly wasn’t Matt’s idea of an ideal birthday afternoon, but parenting never asks what time is convenient. We pulled up outside her apartment, maintaining careful, clinical social distance from the sidewalk. There were no bear hugs or shared bowls of hot soup, just air hugs across the crisp air and bags of groceries left on the porch.
Yet the shift in her face was instantaneous. The relief and gratitude washed over her, and by the time we backed out of her complex, her posture had changed. She didn’t need a cure; she just needed to know her parents would show up and make love visible. Knowing she felt anchored enough to tackle school and homework this week filled me with deep grace. It was worth every mile.
Now, the calendar begins to accelerate.
Today, Matt drives up to Evergreen to spend time with his mom, while I head south to Littleton to sit with mine. Then comes Wednesday, when we pull the trailer out for our final escape down to Sand Gulch. Looking at the schedule, it feels almost absurd to cram an RV journey into the single digits before a spinal reconstruction. It is bookended by commitments: on the way down, we are filming a surprise private yoga session with a longtime Five Parks practitioner, Daniel, and his wife Allison, something we’ve never done before. On the way back, we’re meeting my high school friend Kelly for lunch. Kelly is a physician assistant who worked right in the thick of orthopedic surgical care and has been an invaluable, reassuring compass guiding me through provider recommendations for years.
I feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer velocity of it all. But beneath the fatigue is a stubborn momentum. We are choosing not to freeze in the headlights. We are packing the bags, filling the fridge, checking in on our moms, and driving toward the red dirt. Nine days out, and life, thankfully refuses to stand still.
