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By Root 223 0

because I knew I could never guarantee that the hand reaching out and grabbing your leg from the middle of a department store clothing rack wouldn’t belong to my child and I get very angry if someone else has helped themselves to my snack food. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have a wonderful time with my nephew as we took him to the redwoods to have the vacation of a lifetime. He was almost twelve, and the window of him still wanting to be in the same room with us was about to quickly close; soon, I knew, he would communicate solely through grunts as he discovered, layer by layer, how uncool we were. He had a bag of Chex Mix with his name labeled on it and I had mine, and as long as our hands stayed in the respective bags, everything was fine for the time being. We packed the car up and headed south to the California border, but not before Nick asked if we could stop at the bookstore so he could read a book during the car ride, since he had already finished the one he brought. I beamed with pride.

We stocked up on reading material for all of us, and five hours later the trees got bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until we reached a sign that informed us that we had, indeed, reached our destination.

If you’ve never been to the redwoods, all I can say is that it really has to be one of the most spectacular places on earth; it’s majestic, amazing—every superlative fits. Tree trunks as big as houses, sunlight streaming through branches, and the subtle quiet and absolute stillness blend as wisps of fog rise and roll together to form a place unlike any I’ve ever been to before.

“Isn’t this great, Nick?” I said as we walked on a path deeper into the forest, where everything became bigger and quieter. I expected that at any moment my nephew would begin jumping up and down from excitement as he cried out in joy, “This is the best place I’ve ever been! Thank you, Aunt Laurie! I love these trees! They are huge! I now have changed my mind and no longer want to be a football player; I want to be a dendrologist, which is a scientist who studies trees, and devote my life to preserving and studying these magnificent, beautiful works of nature! You have changed my life, Aunt Laurie, you have changed my life!”

“This is pretty cool,” my husband said as he gently shook Nick by the shoulders from behind.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he said.

“It’s okay?” I said, laughing at Nick’s coolness toward it all. “These are the biggest trees in the world. Some of them are thousands of years old.”

“The knight in my book is a thousand years old, and he just cast a spell so he can escape a ship he’s being held captive on by a king who used to be good but is now a warlord, so I’d like to see what happens with that, you know,” he replied as he shrugged, hands in his pockets.

“Oh” was the only thing I could think of to say.

“You know, they filmed part of Return of the Jedi here,” my husband added.

“That was before I was born,” Nick said simply. “And my book is sort of more interesting.”

We have three days here, we’ve been in the car all day, and he’s tired, I told myself. Give the kid a break. Let him read his book. Who cares if you just drove eight hours to get here and it’s one of the most amazing things you’ve ever seen? Who cares if he’s not into it right now? We have a ton of other things planned: We’re taking a gondola ride up the side of a mountain, we’re going to the beach, we’re going to drive through the Avenue of the Giants, we’re going to the Sea Lion Caves, and we are going to have fun.

We are going to have fun.

We are going to have fun.

We are going to have fun.

And we did. Nick had fun reading in the backseat of the car as we drove the rest of the way to the cabin we were staying at, I had fun while I ate the rest of my Chex Mix, and my husband had fun thinking to himself.

When we got to the cabin, Nick decided to change into his pajamas and rifled through the backpack my sister had gotten ready for him.

“Aunt Laurie?” he asked after a couple of minutes. “Do you have an extra pair of pajamas? Mom forgot mine.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Well, how