Road Trip to Silesia IV – on friendship(s) (and) final thoughts

There is an epilogue to all this, because there always is an epilogue to all this once you’ve come back, decompressed and attained the benefit of hindsight. It helps that you are not dependent on anyone or any circumstance in that particular situation. 

The mother a.k.a. Mrs. 52 Hours of Freedom, of course, was punished by the family matriarch, who may or may not have been waiting for her chance. The little infant developed a skin condition, the type that develops in infants whose skin is still gathering information on how to deal with the influences it is subjected to from the outside world so that until the message has been delivered, computed and transformed into an action plan, little pimples here and there come and go, without much of any worry. 

Though not to the mother-in-law. She immediately consulted with her Very Close Friend the Midwife. The Friend listened for a full minute before nodding sagely and then declaring – without ever having seen the child in question or a picture of said condition – that this could only be due to the mother’s destructive eating habits. The little tyke’s skin condition would clear right up once the mother dropped dairy, sugar and carbs from her eating plan. A concept both the mother-in-law and her son jumped on the second it was voiced. 

Food was everything, the infant’s father kept repeating, and reminded her that eating right as a mother was the least she could do for her infant. He’d already made her cut out coffee on the presumption that it was bad for the baby, despite several doctors assuring the mother that up to two cups of coffee were absolutely fine, and would spell no harm to the mother or the baby. Advice the father chose to ignore, since he hadn’t heard it himself and besides, surely the mother – being harried and clearly not up to the standards that were asked of her – had misheard. Because as his mother kept saying, “who had ever heard of someone having that much coffee in a day while still breastfeeding.” 

I mention this because – despite having witnessed it time and time again – this type of behavior is still completely beyond me. I give Finland a lot of slack, but the one thing that stood out for me was a Finnish friend saying, “once they are adults, they live their lives. I have no right to interfere in any of their choices. Their partner and children take precedence.” It was an interesting thing to hear from someone I knew had raised children of her own, who were all close knit and whose kids loved spending time with their grandparents. Of course this is character before nationality, but too many cultures still justify that way of thinking, sanctifying violence of any level, allowing for one party to be forced into submission by the other. And by cultures I mean – as always – the environment someone grew up with, the preferred alliances they make with people of all walks of life.

People like the father (and his mother) exist everywhere, and the sad thing is, because they stick to their tribe, they always find justification for their behavior. Worst of all, they will always come down hard on the ones who want to do things a different way, splitting home labor and emotional labor equally, holding both partners equally accountable for the protection of an infant on all levels (physical, emotional, financial) and what each level implies. 

But there is a third aspect to this as well. One that transcends all the dire experiences and moments of a road trip from hell in many ways (some of which I won’t mention due to privacy). As CCKs and TCKs we lose friendships on the daily. This is just how it goes and we get used to it, or at the very least accept it as the fact of life it is. We drift apart, we move, we forget to send a message, get tired of (not) trading likes, and that’s if you’re an avid user of social media. So sometimes we can overlook that a road trip can make or break a relationship too. In this we don’t differ from anyone else, we just might either be so used to it happening that we neglect to put two and two together or we attribute it to other factors, mainly yet another relationship that just happened to run its course. 

But sometimes the opposite happens. A shitty experience e.g. a road trip gone wrong can bring people together, tighten the bond because we lived through the experience and came out the other end laughing. I remember one trip when I was in school in Germany. Most people in that year (not so) secretly hated each other.  (I took it as a chance to be somewhere with my best friend, show her around my home turf and stock up on some items you could not get in Germany, like books, notebooks, pens and clothes I liked). So when everyone arrived in Paris and saw the setup – especially after having to spend the night in a very small double bed with someone you secretly hated – they all set as far away from each other on the bus the following day as they possibly could. 

Meanwhile my bestie and I assessed the situation, managed to fit two chairs on the small French balcony and stocked up on food. We ended up having a bomb meal we made ourselves in our hotel room in the middle of the night. We never discussed it like that (other than commenting on how everyone was sitting apart) but we did remain as close as we’d always been and laughed at everything that went wrong, because that was part of the fun. 

Moral of the story, not all (road) trips from hell have to be ruined because of what happens on them. There can be great moments embedded amidst all the setbacks, something you see, the way you feel, moments you have. And a friendship enduring past all the elements of hell is a friendship to truly cherish. Besides being proof that when all’s said and done good can trump evil.