by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

In February 2001 my grandfather and I took a road trip from LA to Dallas to see my cousin’s new baby. He was 87 (grandpa, not the baby), but still working and as vibrant as could be.

We split the driving and made it to Albuquerque that first day, where we checked into a 1940s era motor court motel. It’d been a long day, but traveling some 740 miles in my grandfather’s plush, meticulously maintained 1989 Cadillac Fleetwood, which seemed to float over Interstate 10 before we headed northeast at Mesa, Arizona to pick up the 40 in Holbrook, made for a comfortable grind.

After a steak dinner — his go-to — we headed back to our utilitarian room to get some sleep, two weary travelers now extra drowsy with a bellies full of beef.

Though he would live another nine years, I had the presence of mind to know my time with him was limited. I’d recently taken to asking him questions about his life and recording his responses with a video camera or mini-cassette recorder. So, it wasn’t out of character for me to interrogate him as we laid there in the dark in our twin beds in New Mexico. “How is it that you’re still working and driving across country when so many people your age are barely hanging on?” I asked. He thought about it for a few seconds. “Well, you have to have someone relying on you,” he said. “You have to have something to do every day that people are depending on you for.”

Simple enough, I thought.

Four years after our Texas adventure grandpa took a tumble in the backyard and broke his hip, bringing an abrupt end to his working and driving days. After being released from the hospital his spirit visibly sagged. He was still sharp cognitively, but his body was betraying him. He withdrew. I was sitting with him one day around this time and asked him what was wrong. “I just feel so puny,” this giant of a man said.

After several more falls, he went to live at Pilgrim Place’s skilled nursing care facility. His last few years were not joyful. Nobody was relying on him. In fact, increasingly, he was relying on others for assistance in every way. It broke him. He died five years later, at 96.

I was a stay-at-home dad when grandpa died, with an infant son and two elementary school-aged daughters; my stock as someone who was relied upon was at an all-time high. In the nearly 15 years since I’ve watched my kids grow into adults, grandchildren have been born, and I have slowly but surely become less and less needed.

Now I’m 60 and though I am very much enjoying the benefits of having independent kids — my wife and I will be off on our third trip to Europe in just over a year this October — being needed less has left me melancholy.

I’m far from feeling “puny,” but I’m definitely less essential. Thankfully I have a fulfilling job, a rewarding side hustle as a musician and songwriter, and am never lacking for things to do, business, pleasure, or otherwise. It’s just that the must gratifying job of all — dad — is taking up less and less of my time these days, and it’s left a void.

I’ve always admired grandparents who step in and raise their grandchildren when their own kids aren’t up to the task. But now I see it in a slightly different light. I wonder about the life affirming — and possibly life extending — effects of those parental encores. And yes, if I could go back to 2010 and tap the much less gray-haired version of myself on the shoulder — that guy with the infant, the 5- and 8-year-old — and tell him he’d one day be daydreaming about doing it all over, I’d have never believed me.

But the joy of raising kids is the best thing I’ve ever felt. Being in tune with their every utterance, their diets, sleep schedules, doctor’s visits, and of course all that time spent exploring the neighborhood parks, climbing trees, swimming, and laughing, all the while serving as pre- pre-K teacher and caregiver, it just can’t be beat.

This weekend I’ll drive my now 22-year-old middle daughter — and a minivan full of her clothes — up to San Francisco for her final semester at SFSU. Her two younger siblings will be joining us, making a weekend out of what had been planned as a quick turnaround trip.

These rites of passage are stacking up as the years go by. It’s surreal to think back on the journey: talking, walking, solid food, graduating from diapers, preschool, kindergarten, grade school, middle school, and high school, and now on to college. My youngest daughter is 18 and after testing out of high school in the 10^th grade, is in her second year of college. My son is 14, is 6-foot-1-inches tall with scraggly facial hair, and looks 25. He’ll begin his freshman year at Claremont High in a couple weeks.

When they were young, I took these sorts of trips for granted — Lake Tahoe, Ventura, San Diego, and elsewhere — but nowadays they’re rare. Much of that scarcity has to do with the difficulty in rounding them all up in one place, and also because they all stay up all night and sleep all damn day now that summer’s here. It’s hard to spend the day at the beach when we’re leaving at 7 p.m.

Parenting is weird. When things are rough, you feel like they’ll never end, but I woke up one day and my kids were in college. It’s astounding how true the cliche “time flies” turns out to be. In my mind I’m 30, but I blinked, and I was 60.

So I’ll soak up this weekend with gusto. 400-some miles up the godforsaken 5 Freeway with them in Old Gold, a couple days of getting the kid settled in her sweet little house in San Francisco’s Parkside district, a tearful goodbye, then 400 miles south to Claremont. There was a time when I dreaded these epic drives, but no more; I relish all the time I can get with them. Who knows when I’ll manage to have them all captive again for so long? Plus, my kid needs me to get her up to school, and it sure feels nice to be needed.