Comfort food on the road to nowhere

Mama never looked quite like this
Trenton, ON
December 2018
This photo originally shared on Instagram

London is a long way from our original home in Montreal. Most of the 730 km-ish trip is spent on Canada's largest, busiest highway, the 401. Because it winds through Toronto, Canada's largest, busiest city, traffic is always a factor. A normally 9-hour ride can easily become 13-plus if the weather doesn't cooperate and/or someone gets violently ill along the way. We speak from ample experience.

Thankfully they've built handy OnRoute highway rest stops along the way. Stops are planned around our next meal or snack. Distances are carefully calculated, passengers are polled, and time estimates are regularly communicated. And when the fluorescent lights finally loom oasis-like ahead, you can almost feel the atmosphere in the car change from monotony to possibility. We live for those happy moments at times like this.

I'll be the first to admit I don't eat as healthily as I probably should during long drives. I'm not a Type A personality, and tapping my watch as I turn beet-red because we're losing time just isn't my thing. So we don't rush, per se, but we are conscious of time. And I don't have the time to carefully prepare and pack salads and homemade granola. So this time it was an A&W Mama Burger, a bit of comfort food in a place and a time where comfort can be difficult to find.

As I often do during road trips, I look for signature moments, snippets that will later remind us of what it felt like to be there. And this particular burger, on this particular day, cooperated rather nicely. It was almost too pretty to eat.

I won't earn brownie points for nutrition - or, if my rabbi is reading this, for being a remotely good Jew - but on this day that wasn't the point. Photography-as-refuge need not always be circumstantially perfect. Like this trip, this chapter in our little family's life, it just is. And we're doing our best to make it ours.

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