They're never too old

Every year on this day, a line from a song plays over and over in my head.  "She's coming home this Christmas day...". 

It's the day that my oldest baby girl comes home to spend Christmas with me.  Of course, it also happens to be one of the snowiest days of the early winter and brings the longest 5-7 hours of worry of the entire year.  Aren't you supposed to be done with the stress and the worrying after they turn 18 and move out?

Somehow, Old Man Winter knows that my baby is driving across Wyoming and TWO mountain passes and gives us a whopper of a snowstorm.  He even decided that he should start the storm in the middle of the night so that, as soon as Baby Boo woke me up at 6 am, I could look out the window and start to worry about her travelling in the snow, in Wyoming, in the middle of winter. 

I could have handled the worry that always accompanies this day, had I not read "Chain Laws in effect from the Utah border to Rock Springs" on Facebook. I don't know how I ever survived before the days of the internet, road sensors, and cameras taking pictures of road conditions every 2 minutes.  My entire morning has been spent pressing CTRL+R to refresh the page. 

She sends me the standard Wyoming traveling updates:
  "Leaving Laramie"
  "Rawlins :-)"
  "Rock Springs"
  "Almost to the Sisters"

This is how we measure time and distance in Wyoming.  Nobody really cares about how many actual miles there are between towns.  We know it takes an hour and a half and when you make it to Rawlins, you've passed Elk Mountain safely.  We know it takes an hour and a half and when you make it to Rock Springs, you've passed the dreariest stretch of I-80 and blowing snow and head winds. We know that it takes an hour and when you are almost to the Sisters, you have 30 minutes and your baby will be home. 

Of course, it also means that you pray the snow plows and semis have had time to clear up the roads and that they haven't decided to close the last mountain pass before she is home.  You pray that everyone else out there remembers how to drive over mountains on wet and slick roads.

But that moment...

The one when you hear the door open 5 hours after the first message...

She's walking in and the world is right again.