One infamous trip to Ohio, my parents moved my brother into the middle seat to see whether that would calm nerves. It didn’t. Then they moved my sister into the middle. That didn’t help either. So my mom moved into the back seat as “peace keeper,” allowing my sister, the oldest, to move into the front. Within five minutes my mom and I were elbowing each other, arguing about who was encroaching on who. She denies elbowing me to this day, but I know it’s true.
By the time we reached West Virginia, the backseat wars had usually settled, and we all focused on the treacherous, yet beautiful scenery. We passed semi-trucks chug-chugging up the steep mountains, and occasionally saw truck drivers turn off the road and steer onto unpaved uphill paths because they worried their brakes wouldn’t take the descents. It seemed like a different world as we passed tiny houses sitting on million-dollar views.
We usually arrived in Delaware, Ohio, a small town thirty miles north of Columbus, some time between 1–2 p.m. It was the start of a fun week romping on my grandparents’ ten acres, eating fresh tomatoes, corn, and blackberry pies for dinner, and swimming in their freezing cold pool. I never really remembered the drive home—possibly because I was too tired, or less excited, or just spoiled by the uninterrupted time I’d already had with my family.
I want to create a tradition for my family, but things do seem so different. Will I pack food like my mom did? Will we rely on familial conversation and the alphabet game for entertainment, or will we give in to the DVD player craze, just to make things easier? Will we even drive, or in three decades will my son write stories about the airport in the 2000s?
I do know this: those trips were special, and I wouldn’t change one thing about them. Not the tuna sandwiches, not the loathing we all felt for South Carolina, not the uncomfortable cot or my dad’s snail-paced driving. In fact, I wish we could all go back and do it again.
