I was only slightly late for the road trip with my daughter by my estimation, but, whatever, late is late and it is not good.
I parked as quickly as I could, grabbed my jacket and my purse and slid into the car, trying to make my sorry late self as small as possible.
I humbly acknowledged the fact I was late and begged the driver for forgiveness.
Finally, in what seemed like hours, but was only about 10 minutes my daughter muttered something about probably making it on time in spite of my tardiness if it wasn’t icy.
It wasn’t.
And as we drove along the bare and non icy highway on our mother/daughter road trip, I pushed my guilt aside and allowed all the good feelings to simply wash over me.
And they did.
And so it was just like it was supposed to be. Casual. Relaxed. Lots of chatting. Lots of laughter. Easy and fun. Happy and good.
The destination of our road trip was a dinner party in the big city of Calgary.
Ahh! The dinner party. It is lovely to be invited to a dinner party.
Don’t get me wrong.
I love having dinner parties, myself. But to get invited to one and watch as someone else scurries around to make sure all the water glasses are filled, everyone has enough food, and the conversation is flowing in the right direction is really quite rewarding.
This particular dinner party was all about healthy eating and had, in fact, been prepared by two certified holistic nutritional gurus.
My daughter and I felt very fortunate, indeed, to be included on the guest list.
To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what was included in the all the sauces and dips included in the dinner. I really only recognized the basic ingredients like roast beef, red cabbage salad, sweet potatoes and cauliflower rice. For me, the rest of the food was kind of like taking part in a tasting guessing game.
I’ve been trying to eat healthy ever since it came to my attention that I probably wasn’t.
Eating healthy that is.
However, I didn’t give up chips and pop without a fight. In fact, I haven’t given them up entirely, but I am trying to steer myself in a different, decidedly healthy direction.
And I must say it was incredibly easy at the dinner party.
And so, both my daughter and I moved with relative, if slightly contrived ease in the circle of our new found friends.
We certainly didn’t share our secret that we had shared a chocolate bar on our road trip.
Instead, we discretely crumpled the wrapper and left it in the car and smoothly made the transition, joining everyone else as we dined on healthy food, drank plain, clear water and sipped some kind of special tea and, at the end of the evening enjoyed a Turmeric latte.
We discussed it on the way home.
The meal. And we agreed the benefits of healthy nutrition cannot be taken lightly.
It is important.
But, really, if the truth be known, I think if the dinner party had been all about pizza and beer or hamburger goulash it wouldn’t have mattered one bit because of the road trip.
And, of course, the company.
It is the company that truly nourishes the soul. And a little bit of laughter stirred up with a large dose of quiet companionship sprinkled with lots of great conversation spiced with a dash of humor and gentle common sense are just the right ingredients to make that happen.
But, on the other hand, apparently Turmeric lattes do have many health benefits that probably should be checked out.
And I will, for sure.
After all, it’s good to be a little bit knowledgable about such things!
Treena Mielke is the editor of the Rimbey Review. She lives in Sylvan Lake with her family.