Westward Ho!

There is a line in the movie “Parenthood”, spoken by Jason Robards, which I will paraphrase here. On parenting: You’re never done. You never get to cross the goal line, spike the ball and do your touch-down dance. Nothing brings the truth of those lines closer to home than having an adult child on the road, driving alone from Tennessee to California.

I remember reading teen books when I was younger about young women on the road- Annette Funicello in her red roadster, for example- and it was all great fun and high adventure and absolutely nothing I would ever do. I was 32 before I ever drove on a freeway. I drove from Michigan to Tennessee with my then small children in the back seat, and had to stop in Toledo to get on top of my anxiety attack. We made the trip in 10 hours. It was and will remain the longest road trip I have taken where I was the driver.

I drove to Dallas with my sister in 1988 to see our brother, but that doesn’t count, because I was just the navigator, and because of my unerring sense of direction we circled a McDonald’s in Little Rock, Arkansas, unable to actually GET to it, until it began to feel as if it was enchanted- so tantalizingly close, so ephemeral as we approached. We finally did enter the McDonald’s and ate there, but from that point on, I was just a passenger. That’s the way I like it, if I have to travel by car, and I don’t like to have to travel by car.

So I marvel at the courage and panache of my daughter, who has just called to say she is on the road. I haven’t slept well in weeks in anticipation of this call, and have been fervently praying that she would find a traveling companion at the last minute… now I won’t sleep until I hear that she is firmly ensconced in a well-fortified hotel room, having had a safe drive and a good dinner and a day without incident. Then I will worry until the next day’s call. You never stop being a mother, waiting up to make sure your child makes it safely home. No touch-down dance. Sigh.

I won’t be here when she arrives; I will be flying to Tennessee as she drives through the Golden West. She will be coming “home” to an empty apartment. No one to help her unpack. No one to listen to her tale of adventure. It will be the end of a very long trip alone.
On the other hand… maybe it’s better that she makes this trip alone. After all, the Donner party traveled west as a group, and look what happened to them.