Road Trippin'

My brother in law’s name is Sherman. He’s the only Sherman I know. He’s a mysterious guy. Not much of a talker and doesn’t take too kindly to even the most friendly questioning.

He was planning on driving up from Northern California for Father’s Day now that my FIL is living up here. That’s almost 700 miles away, about a 10-and-a-half-hour drive without any stops. And he couldn’t come up for Sunday, so he was planning to arrive Friday night and leave Saturday evening. He’s a beast that way, like a long haul driver on blow. He leaves after work and arrives in the middle of the night so he doesn’t have to spring for a hotel room or a plane ticket.

Almost ten years ago, Albert and I rented an RV for a road trip to Southern California with the kids. Our first stop was a wedding in Ventura for Albert’s high school classmate. I picked up the 30-foot beast from the RV rental lot on a Friday afternoon. Albert got home from work a little early, we ate a quick dinner, and we hit the road for the 1,000-mile drive to Darren’s wedding which was taking place Saturday around noon.

The RV had a queen sized bed, a shower and toilet, a full kitchen, and comfortable seating, so there was no need to stop. Albert and I alternated napping and driving, fueled by Diet Coke and Cheez-Its for the 20-hour duration of the trip. My stomach is churning as I remember the nausea from too little sleep paired with too much caffeine. What an adventure.

Albert has a long-standing dream of selling all our belongings and travelling the country in an RV. I wasn’t that enthusiastic about this idea ten years ago, but now I am dead set against it. It is a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea.

Living in an RV is not much different than living in a house, except that the dwelling is much less comfortable and the boring chores are much more complicated. Cooking in an RV is like trying to prepare a meal for your family in a preschool kitchenette. Except you use regular human sized plates which you have to wash in a little dollie sized sink.

Also, we non-nomads are just not used to storing poo inside the house for days, allowing it to slosh around until we happen upon an opportunity to pump it out. So gross. So unnecessary.

And there’s no privacy. As it is, I hide in the closet of my big house to get away from the people I adore. I’m not excusing her behavior, but I feel a ton of compassion for Andrea Yates, the lady who was convicted of murdering her children in 2002. She and her FIVE CHILDREN were living in a motor home at the time. All the children were between the ages of two and eight. FIVE of them. In one motor home.

I would definitely not sign up for a marathon drive like that again, and it astounds me that Sherman does this pretty regularly, whether driving up to Portland or down to Southern California.

So Sherman was planning on a Father’s Day visit, but my FIL scolded him a little. Why drive all that way just to spend less than 24 hours? Why not come another time?

Uh….Father’s Day? It made me sad that my FIL didn’t acknowledge this even though I kind of get it from a parent’s point of view. You know how I feel about that rip-off called Mother’s Day and other “holidays” that are mandated by our bossy social structure. My FIL has been worried about COVID as well. Seniors have been hardest hit, and he worries not only for his own health but about bringing the virus into his community.

But as a daughter, I would be pretty sad if I were willing to drive 11 hours after work just to see my parents for a day….WHICH I WOULD NOT, bee-tee-dubs….and they dismissed that as a silly idea.

My freshman year in college, I lived in Berkeley, and it was my first real time away from home. I had no idea how to take care of myself, how to make decisions, how to BE. I was unmoored, anxious, and terribly homesick. It wasn’t hard for some friends to convince me that it would be a great idea to rent a car and drive down to Southern California to pay a surprise visit to our parents.

We left after class on a Friday and arrived around eleven o’clock that night. I was sooooo excited and absolutely CERTAIN that my parents would be so shocked and delighted to see me!

Shocked? Yes.

Delighted? NO.

As a parent of young adults, their reaction makes a million, zillion times more sense to me now. My kids are approximately three hundred and ninety-five percent smarter and more prepared to live than I was at that age, and I STILL find myself habitually worrying about them.

This is what Brene Brown and Oprah call Foreboding Joy. Two of my faves discuss the reason that joy is the most terrifying, difficult emotion we experience as humans. Why? Because many of us look at our kids and realize that we feel a love that we didn’t even know was possible. And a split second later, we worry, because something terrible might happen to this precious child. It’s scary to feel that joy, because it opens the door to fear that it could all be taken away.

I spent about 24 hours at home that weekend and was disappointed that my parents were only medium happy to see me. They explained to me much later that they were alarmed when I arrived. I had roused them from sleep and they immediately worried that something was very wrong.

Come here a minute. Will you hold this BIG BAG OF DUH for me?? The scariest shit goes ALWAYS down in the middle of the night. I know this now.

Even after they were assured that nothing was wrong, I was so jacked up on arrival that they admitted later that they thought I might be “on drugs.” Now, many of you know my kids. They are THE BEST. And as fleeting as the thought tends to be, I immediately suspect “drugs” when my kids are acting weird. And they act weird often. Is this a typical parent’s thought? I have no idea.

But each time they catch me off guard with some behavior, and I am able to assure myself that they are not indeed “on drugs,” I put a little more confidence in my pocket so that I panic just a little bit less the next time they do something unexpected.

Sherman didn’t end up coming this past weekend. We had a quiet day with some cocktails, a nice dinner, and a Costco apple pie for dessert. No muss. No fuss. No drugs.

Wishing you all a wonderful week, my friends! As always, thank you for reading!