Three to Get Ready #5: The Endless Miles

This is the fifth in a series of posts that provides one dad's reflections on the last three months of a daughter's club volleyball career. They will appear every Friday until the JVDA Championships in Louisville, Kentucky.

I'll start with a bit of a confession: I've been writing as though my experiences with club volleyball will come to an abrupt end at the JVDA Championships. More than likely, they won't. There's a better-than-average chance I'll still be involved with club volleyball for a few more years, traveling to new destinations, enduring third games, hearing silly cheers and observing various coaching styles. But my experience will be fundamentally different because my memories with my oldest child will certainly begin to fade, including some very specific destinations, games, cheers and coaches.

Not to mention one particular stretch of open road. A long stretch. With not much to see or do except one thing: Talk.

That's right, talk. Have a conversation. Ask a question, be asked a question in return and, most important, hear answers from a teenager that are more than one word long. Full paragraphs at times. So tell me: Without club volleyball (and the Badger Region's rule that parents do the driving), would I have had as much dialogue as I've had with my teenage daughter?

Not a chance.

We certainly didn't talk as much during high school seasons when a bus would take her from venue to venue. So what exactly did we discuss over all those miles? Three things in particular: the past, the present and the future.

The Past
One of the things that slips through the cracks these days is a solid knowledge of history. Not world or U.S. history. Knowledge of something I'll call an AP Course in Family History. I've used those long stretches of road to teach this course. My daughter has heard how my wife and I met (on a volleyball court, incidentally), where we've lived, what we believe about the meaning of the universe and why. And she's actually enjoyed this course because it wasn't really a course at all. It was a way to pass the endless miles.

The Present
Another frequent topic has been the present: who she was going to prom with, how her insane coach had gone overboard on a certain drill, when she would find time to finish her math homework. All that and more. I had time to listen. And I welcomed the opportunity club volleyball had provided.

The Future
If there's anything I've learned about teenagers (and I'm still not convinced I've learned a single thing), it's that the future is not a topic to dive into until the moment is just right. Fortunately, my daughter and I have been spent enough time together for those conversations to occur often. This fills me with confidence (OK, slightly less anxiety) about the world she will soon enter in college.

Years from now, I imagine myself getting into a car with one of my grandchildren and driving down what will seem to be random Wisconsin roads. Eventually, we'll reach that stretch of open road I'm thinking of right now. And when we get there, I'll tell that child about the long conversations I'd had there with his or her mother, discussing nearly every subject imaginable over those very same endless miles.

Next Week: The Tweaked Ankles