The same December my marriage died, so did my beloved 18-year-old cat and my trusty Honda Civic.
It happens like that, in my experience. Big things end all at once. A wildfire taking both the invasive weeds and the treasured wildlife without discriminating. You can’t see it at the time, but the clearing out is necessary to make way for something else you will come to treasure.
That 1994 Civic was the first new car I ever bought on my own. I had brought my future husband with me to the dealer because, as a young woman, I was worried about negotiating the price and not knowing enough about cars. I thought bringing a man would give me an advantage. I underestimated myself. He sat silent while I asked the questions, negotiated the purchase, and read every word of the paperwork.
That car stayed with me for over 300,000 miles until the engine finally cracked right as I was moving on from my marriage.
“. . .the clearing out is necessary to make way for something else you will come to treasure.”
Since my parents were thinking about getting a new car, they offered me their old Honda Accord. To this day, I suspect they weren’t really ready for a new car, but it was one of their ways of helping me out. They said they could have it shipped over from Chicago to the Bay Area.
After thinking about it, I realized that I could go out and drive it back. Even though it was January, because I was homeschooling, I wasn’t tied to a typical school day with the three kids and because I was freelance writing, I could work from anywhere. The custody situation hadn’t gotten hairy yet, so I simply said I was leaving the state with the kids for a while.
I booked a sleeper car on Amtrak’s California Zephyr, and over three days we ventured across the undulating landscapes of this magnificent country, through Donner Pass’s tragic history, Utah mesas, Colorado snowcaps, golden farms and fields of Nebraska and Iowa. I felt free.
My dad picked us up at the Chicago station. He had serviced the car, gotten me new tires. We pored over his atlas and mapped out a driving route back home across the old Route 66 in my new-old Honda. I noted tentative stopping points, 5-8 hours in between, giving us time to explore along the way. I had no hotel reservations. Each day, when I got tired of driving, I would use an app to book a hotel in the next town.
Friends and family worried about our open-ended itinerary and the possible dangers of a solo woman driving with three young kids across the country. I didn’t feel worried. I felt free.
Beside me on this trip sat Stella with our atlas. While I used Waze as a backup, I turned it off most of the time, preferring the visual of the old-school map. I liked that Stella could track where we were, where we were headed, and all the possible routes. I relied on her.
She became my most trusted co-pilot.
Over the next seven years, as we found windows of time, we road-tripped over all continental states west of the Mississippi minus North Dakota. Swaths of audiobooks and national parks, gas station bathrooms and Spotify playlists, secret hot springs and motel TVs. On the road, usually with an open itinerary, my children and I were at our best. Even at ages 7, 9, and 11, they were content to sit in a sedan for hours. The pressures of regular daily life dropped further and further behind us. With each state line crossing, we made it our new tradition to take our picture in front every “Welcome to” sign. When something looked interesting, we stopped. It’s how we discovered that Idaho hot spring, a dinosaur museum, and some funky Route 66 museum they still talk about. That first big trip with just the four of us, we drove right up to the Grand Canyon and got a hotel, since it was the off-season and didn't need the usual year-in-advance reservations. One summer, we started toward Oregon, but wildfires and Stella's asthma kept pushing us east, so we ended up at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Once, we spent the night under a Montana Walmart parking lot light, which is a whole story on its own.
Not having an itinerary became our favorite travel mode. And a parallel for how I navigated the next stage of my new life as a single mom. Because of so many unexpected changes in my life, favoring resilience over fixed destinations allowed me to stay open to possibility instead of being stuck in the resentment of what should have been and what was planned.
“Not having an itinerary became our favorite travel mode. And a parallel for how I navigated the next stage of my new life as a single mom.”
American capitalist culture is big on setting goals and productivity. We’re supposed to know where we’re headed, have a plan for getting there, and get there as fast as we can. We place so little value on the unplanned way. The unexpected beauty of the back road. The slow detour. Last month, when Stella was on a road trip of her own with her boyfriend, she texted me a video of a brown bear that they happened on. She said she knew that when cars are on the side of the road in a national park, you should pull over. She said she was amazed by how many cars whizzed by, intent on their destination, without realizing what they were passing.
I like to think that as my co-pilot, Stella has picked up a thing or two about resilience and savoring the ride. About freedom and the excitement of what you might find if you focus more on the trip than on the endpoint. She, in turn, has taught me more than she knows about trusting your own compass. That child (well, adult) has the strongest sense of direction of anyone I know.
“We place so little value on the unplanned way. The unexpected beauty of the back road. The slow detour. ”
This past month, since Stella is heading off to college, we took one of our last road trips together for a while. The morning we left, we decided between Santa Barbara or Utah. (Utah. We had missed Bryce Canyon the first time we were there, and believe me, it's not to be missed.)
When that Civic died back in 2014, there was no way I could have envisioned the adventures we've had together or the treasures that the clearing out has brought.
On this last trip for a while, I had a jumble of feelings. Big things are ending again. On the one hand, I’m excited for Stella’s new adventures, both of the wonderful and the painful variety. I’m thrilled for her freedom and independence. I feel confident that she’s ready. Proud that she is not nervous or afraid. Grateful for our connection. But also, her leaving is a wildfire clearing a space that will require some time lying fallow before something new will grow.
Mostly, though, I’m already missing my co-pilot. Even though I have total faith that we both know the way.