BY RAINA JOINES
I once believed the normal way to travel was to decant the contents of a suburban house into an Oldsmobile, engage in an elaborate ritual of feeding plants and unplugging appliances, and head for the highway with enough snacks wrapped in plastic to provision an expedition to Mars.
“Have you written down rubber gloves?” my mother would yell toward the living room, referring to a master packing list first drafted the year I was born.
“Yes,” Dad would fire back as if about to win the final round of Jeopardy, “and are you taking your work gloves?”
“We might as well take it all,” she’d say.
That line encapsulated their packing philosophy. Fortunately, their 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser was built with a matching motto in mind—Just Bring Everything—if not with a picture of my two smiling parents pinned up on the design board. “They’ll need a place to put the standing hair dryer,” someone in marketing might have said, looking closely at my mother’s hairdo, and the engineers would set to work.
The car was big. It had a seat we called “the back” that could easily accommodate four adults in dress clothes. This was flanked by “the back in the back,” a vast plain capacious enough for a mattress. Below this was a hold, as on a sailboat, containing fishing poles, a spare tire, sacks of emergency supplies, a variety of excavating tools, and the entire windbreaker section of a sporting goods store. Wind was a serious problem in my parents’ life, which was unfortunate since they lived in Tornado Alley. For vacation, we would escape to Colorado, where gigantic mountains were thought to block the breeze.
There was a luggage rack on top of the Olds. We never used it. It was a point of pride to be able to fit everything inside the vehicle. This now seems as silly as bragging about fitting a whole football game inside a stadium. Of course, aerodynamics were a factor. I hesitate to imagine how many, or few, miles our loaded transport got to the gallon. The car alone weighed as much as an armored elephant and maneuvered the same way, lumbering clumsily around town at low speeds, careening unstoppably once it got going on open road. At about seventy-five miles an hour, the yellow behemoth seemed to take flight. The noise of the engine dropped to a low hum, the irregularities in the road smoothed out, and the car soared down the highway.
Trips began with my sister and me in the back. As the baby of the family, my sister was ensconced in enough swaddling to ensure no shocks from the road or real life would ever reach her, and I brought enough books to guarantee the same thing. I primed my parents for my complete and total disengagement from my surroundings until our arrival in the Rockies by pointedly saying, “OK, now I’m going to read my book,” a phrase that did not then, or ever, have the slightest effect on anything they did. I would get through a page, blissfully launching myself into an alternate reality for a few moments, only to be yanked back by someone requesting a Kleenex, a water bottle, a certain tote bag that had perhaps been left behind, or something so far in the back in the back that I’d have to shed an outer layer and slither into the tiny space between our possessions and the ceiling to retrieve it.
Despite the spacious back seat, it wasn’t easy to move around in the car. I spent hours separated from my sister by a wall of possessions whose function on a two-state trip I cannot fathom. Some were packed in boxes, as if the vacation might end up being a permanent move. What was inside? My mother’s mesh and steel curlers? My parents’ matching wind-up alarm clocks? My father’s paint-spattered work shoes? The same seat also held my mother’s small Samsonite case, a hard shell of gunmetal blue with an industrial-strength handle and two lockable steel clasps. It was the size and weight of a cinderblock and looked as if it might protect a delicate instrument designed to navigate by the earth’s rotation. But the lid opened to reveal a square mirror, a stash of Mary Kay makeup, three kinds of moisturizer, and an array of little tools my mother could not do without—a jeweler’s loupe, a miniscule pair of pliers, the slim screwdriver that loosened the plates on her sewing machine, and a tiny stick made of roughened metal designed to catch and pull snagged threads back inside one’s clothing. This cache might have been worth its weight in gold in a frontier situation; to my mother, who lugged the giant brick around and sorted through its contents whenever we were in need, it was insurance against entropy, a force my parents believed they could counter with four gloved hands and a well-stocked Craftsman cabinet. The second law of thermodynamics is the line of engagement as far as they are concerned. My parents have waged battle there for as long as I can remember, always surprised when anything slid south in the first place.
Two water coolers sat on the floor. The gigantic lunch cooler nestled between them. My parents were obsessed with ice, and they favored chilling almost everything, no matter how little it needed it. Once, on a fishing trip, I pulled a rock-hard Snickers bar out of the cooler and gnawed on it for ten minutes until the outer layer of chocolate chipped away. The process was fueled by freezing sips of Coca-Cola that threatened to place my head in a state of cryogenic suspension. My dad, like many Baby Boomers, kept things cold as a matter of course until a decision was made about what to do with them. My parents set intact watermelons on ice in the living room until they were consumed, brought the Lil’ Oscar whenever they went out to eat. The red Coleman cooler we took on picnic trips has been in nearly continuous use since 1977. One imagines the hydrologic cycle perpetually cranking on within, perhaps preserving a molecule of the Breck hair spray we once used to pouf and hold our feathered hair.
The problem with all this baggage was that what took four days to pack in suburbia needed to be carried into public accommodations in one go. The spectacle of our arrival and unloading must have had the iffy appeal of a clown car at the circus. Sporting wild hair and clad in clashing pastels, a knot of cramped passengers tumbled out in disarray to carry bundles for forever. People set on redistributing the mass of the universe with such diligence could only be Midwesterners or doomsday preppers, probably both. My parents believed in being equipped to ward off any possible undesirable eventuality, or at least to domesticate it until it was part of the vacation. The apocalypse itself was optional. Who needed on-call logistical support or fancy gear when we had proper supplies, brute force, and the family can-do attitude? A soda spill? We had water, washcloths, detergent in a spray bottle, and a boxed set of magical surfactants that could slip between and release the grip of any two manmade substances on the planet. A roadside breakdown? We had a full toolbox, plenty of duct tape, food for three days, suntan lotion, small envelopes of cash secreted throughout the vehicle, and a Bible study notebook designed to get a nuclear family through Corinthians II in a week.
Was our bounty an implicit criticism of the destination? Could a resort in Buena Vista or Breckenridge not be trusted to provide life support for a week? We carried enough toiletries to stock the place ourselves, hauling in packs of toilet paper under the astonished eyes of the staff. At a casual glance, it may have been hard for other guests to distinguish us from the cleaning crew. Eventually, offers of help would be made, either to put us out of our misery or simply to clear the drive for those who found that a pack of Twizzlers and four duffle bags were enough to sustain them on their westward journey. Once our stuff was in the door, the process reversed, and we spread belongings over the suite until it was hard for us to tell we’d traveled at all.
No matter how much my parents brought, there were always significant gaps between their expectations of the amenities and reality. Upon discovering that an item we had at home was missing, my parents began to tally what to get from the nearest store. Their list expanded to include helpful comments, made to no one in particular, about how things might generally be improved. “They should have blinds on these windows,” mom might say, “because this patch of sun could fade the furniture.” I could sense her making a mental note to alert the staff to a future in which they would be regretfully replacing hundreds of bedspreads due to an entirely preventable error. Later, upon encountering a broken ornament in the decor, she might ask my dad to “tell the front desk that if they had a glue gun, I could fix it for them.” Once he left, she would confide that she’d wanted to bring her own gun, but he wouldn’t let her. He would return from his pretend errand clutching brochures from the hospitality desk and try to distract us by mentioning he’d seen the pool.
Over the course of a week, my parents would seem shocked by anything missing from the nicest place I had ever been in my entire life. They kept up a running narrative like sportscasters at a tournament: “Well, Jean, it is Tuesday and we’ve already seen that there is no 2% milk at the breakfast bar. How long will it be before folks complain?” or “Brent, these hand soaps should be bigger if everyone is to wash properly. Let’s hope no one gets sick.” These examples are rhetorical; of course, we brought our own milk and soap. As a child, it was hard for me to discern the distinction between objects that were genuinely faulty and items that just weren’t up to my parents’ notions of an ideal world. In retrospect, I see they were having the time of their lives. They arrived, observed, and offered suggestions on how to improve things. It was a never-ending task, especially since they brought so many of the things themselves.
Maybe there was something admirable about their surplus of stuff. My parents would have used it all to help any stranger in need. If you needed a scuff buffed, an oil change, a basketball inflated, or emergency surgery, they pretty much had it covered. Their luggage embodied a deep desire, congealed in material objects, to be the ones helping rather than helped. After a lifetime of baking casseroles, strewing salt on driveways, checking others’ tire pressure, and driving the elderly from store to store, my parents were not about to wander around helplessly looking for a pair of sharp scissors in a strange land. Their very identity was at stake. Plus, there was a lot of stuff that needed trimming.
It often seemed as if my parents did not believe in discomfort. To need Chapstick and not have it—the matter must be remedied immediately, with the amount of effort others reserved for cleaning an industrial waste site or building a dam. One of the most astonishing things about our visits to the Great Divide is that my parents would periodically do something that involved serious physical distress, like whitewater rafting. I have pictures of them free-falling through Class IV and V rapids on the ice-cold Arkansas River with expressions that suggest they have found their true calling. Were these the same people who looked disgusted at “chintzy” napkins, who carried a whisk broom in the glove compartment? Were they cleverly disguised adventurers whose stuffed bags signaled foresight and self-reliance? Were my parents loudly suggesting improvements to both raft and rapids as they paddled for their lives?
The pleasure of spontaneously hitting the road with little more than a snack and a book or strolling through the airport holding an eight-pound bag is something I learned later in life. Not that there isn’t a kind of freedom in being over-prepared. I confess I once brought a two-suitcase library and a Honeywell air filter to a residency, then siege-stocked the fridge and freezer so I wouldn’t have to leave for three weeks. I’ve pulled out a novel and a three-course lunch sealed in Tupperware in line at the DMV with a smile that said, you thought I was going to give up? I learned from my parents that tenacity is one part character and three quarts of water. Their vast inventory enabled them to leave suburbia and offer us time in nature, which was beautiful, surprising, and where we might get lost or eaten by a bear.
Besides, there were always opportunities to acquire more stuff in the wild. While they might obtain a few mugs or a piece of local art—a picture of a stand of aspens worked in gold leaf still hangs in their living room—my parents did not care about tourist souvenirs. Mom’s desire to preserve the local flavor was mainly directed at the flora: fronds, flowers, fuzzy seed pods, and the like. Small saplings in cans occupied the chinks between suitcases on the way home. While the enthusiasm of Great Plains dwellers for tree specimens is understandable—the scored white bark of an aspen was as exotic to us as a pineapple must have been to a British Victorian—my mother often had her eyes on an altogether different quarry. Her strategy for collecting it involved a practice round designed to get everyone’s head in the right place. We were encouraged to gather memorable pebbles and stones, keepsakes of our trip that would provide a unique landscape in which the hens and chicks could reside. Then, “Brent, that’s a nice rock,” she would exclaim, pointing out of the window as we sped down I-70 doing eighty-two miles per hour.
“Mmm,” dad would say, not pushing harder on the accelerator but not at all easing off of it either.
“I bet it would look good in the garden.” This phrase, uttered by my mother, is as close as I will ever come to understanding the definition of the word inevitable. It signaled a speed round with an opponent who would, despite all evasive maneuvers, win with exactly the same final move. No matter what he said or did in the next few moments, my father would eventually find himself backing up the car parallel to this boulder, prying it from the ground with a shovel, and hoisting it with great effort into the back in the back.
Once home, it would be carefully placed in our rock garden at an angle designed to set off its “natural beauty.” The virtues of such beauty were a central tenet of my mother’s belief system. Her code justified cadging huge rocks “no one was using,” telling us we did not need makeup, and dressing us in green pants paired with brightly-colored tops because “everything goes with green,” like “a flower on a stem.” While these things did not stand up to logic, it was difficult to argue with her tone. The rock would anchor another ridge for whatever perennials or herbs my mother took a liking to in spring. Collecting was in her blood. My grandmother kept labeled trays of every seashell she gathered, and I saw my first shimmering fool’s gold next to a chunk of mica at her house. The berm in the garden was family history, an exhibit of all the places we had seen and set foot.
The ’73 Custom Cruiser had a colossal back window, a single lens of curved glass that slid up from a wide tailgate. As evening came on, it seemed to disappear, leaving nothing between me and a darkening sky as we flew toward home. As usual, the rest of my family had spent their energy by seven o’clock, leaving this night owl to her thoughts. I would slow-vault myself over the seat, swim over our disheveled cargo to the back window, stretch out next to the rock, and look out of the car’s giant eye. My sister was deep in slumber; my parents whispered in intimate tones far away in the front. They were subdued and ready to tumble into bed. I was satiated, sleepy, flush with oxygen-rich air, and blissfully alone, free to gaze at the shimmering band of stars. These dimmed in passing headlights and returned as the roar of a semi died down. Red beacons from radio towers blinked in the periphery. I lolled in my private cocoon, wishing it could go on forever, and failing to understand why it was necessary to go back to the old routine. We had everything we needed and I longed to remain on the road.
I would try to reproduce this state of euphoria in college, taking my Geo Prizm on long, marathon drives from state to state. I drove until I fell into the meditative groove of the wheels, adrift in a landscape of asphalt and stars. Long conversations with friends during the witching hour stood in stark contrast to the bustle of my family household and the vacations they took from it. In the car, I was liberated, stripped to the core, and listening to what others had to say when they had nothing to distract them. I learned a lot as we rode. It’s amazing how delicious an unexpected roadside treat can be when there’s nothing else to eat, how attentively one reads when there are no more books in the back seat. But it would be a long time before I learned that getting rid of objects made one more grateful. On retreat with my parents, I was content with the plenitude they had to offer.
Once home, mom and dad would lead my drowsy sister to bed and haul in the coolers. They’d adjust the thermostat, check the fridge, and begin familiar bedtime rituals. A list of things to do flowed between them. They’d send me off to sleep, where I would dream of the ground unspooling below me, fueled by the forward movement of hours in the Olds. Like the car, I sailed silently, close to the ground, slicing through air with minimal effort. But in my dreams, I was unencumbered by gravity and free of all possessions.
Raina Joines is a writer and educator from the Midwest. Her work is out or forthcoming in Chattahoochee Review, Crab Orchard Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, I-70 Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. She lives in Denton, TX, and still worries that just one suitcase full of books won’t be enough for the whole trip.
Process Note: One may exhaust a place, but memory is never spent. Here, I turn my attention to the way my parents moved through the world and my gradual recognition that there was something revealing about their overladen vehicle and all the contradictory desires it contained. As I wrote this piece, I imagined a reader who knew them well and loved them both.