Miranda Time, Day 2

Today Miranda and I ventured to north of the San Francisco Bay. First stop, an hour and half after gassing up in Fremont was Santa Rosa. We had a really good lunch in an Omlette place in the "historic old downtown" section.

While eating I asked my daughter about going away to college in August. I started with first, how many trips would she be making home. She said two. One trip home in October for the California School for the Deaf's 150 Anniversary and one more trip back at Christmas time. When I asked about spring break, she finger-spelled what I thought was "Puerto Rico." With that lovely combination of exasperation and infinite patience, she re-finger-spelled "Costa Rica." I registered some surprise. "Hmm," I thought, "I wonder where she's going to get the money for that." Yes, this was the thought before, "I don't want my baby girl going to Central America for spring break!"

Later, I asked Miranda about her friends going to Gallaudet. It turns out her long time friend, Shea, whom she's known since before kindergarten is going to be her roommate in Washington, DC. I don't know why I find this comforting, other than Shea's is a great kid, who I've seen grown up with my girl.

After lunch, Miranda and I visited the Charles M. Schulz museum and got our fill of "Peanuts" and the gang. It's a cute little place. Miranda admired the cartoonist's high school report card - all A's and B's - that was in encased in a display about Mr. Schulz's youth. After the museum, we moved next door to the ice rink, but I couldn't talk my girl into lacing up any skates. Some Canadian girl! We continued on to the Snoopy gift shop, as if we hadn't seen enough of Charlie Brown stuff.

We were both ready to leave Santa Rosa at 2pm and less than an hour later we were on the coast at Bodega Bay, famous for where Hitchcock filmed "The Birds." (I should Miranda this film a few months back and she laughed heartily when birds were pecking away at the top of a fleeing school boy. I admit it, I laughed too. Though I remember watching this same film 40 years earlier and being quite shook up.) It was a windy day, so we didn't stay too long in Bodega Bay and there wasn't a lot to do other than admire the view.

We headed home and got back to Fremont about 6 pm after battling 880 rush hour traffic going south. During one of those bumper-to-bumper times, I talked to Miranda a little more about college. I asked her what she expected to happen in college. She just shrugged. I advised her that it was going to be hard. She nodded. I said there's going to be a lot of pressure from peers to party. She said she knew but didn't want to discuss it anymore.