Father's Day in a Ghost Town
seeking solace, finding joy on a haunting journey
Hello Friends,
This week my favorite guest writer is back for a special Father’s Day edition.
The following story is by my husband Eric. If you’d like to listen, you can hear him read it on the audio.
Starting now, instead of just appearing here in Turkey Town, you’ll can find him at his own Substack, NO/MADness. He has been keeping me entertained for many years with his crazy adventures, funny stories and weird interests, and now you’ll get to enjoy him too. Make sure you subscribe at the bottom of this post.
Unless otherwise noted, photos throughout were taken by Eric, in Bodie State Historical Park, Bodie, California.
Thanks for being here! Love 💛 Tina
Today is my third Father’s Day
since Kiki died. In this new life, the life after Kiki, firsts have been the worst.
This is my second Father’s Day post on Substack – not quite a tradition yet, but well on the way.
If you’re reading this, it’s likely you follow Tina’s essays, so you know that we are full-timers – meaning we live in our camper and travel full time. To make it even more hardcore, we haven’t owned a “sticks and bricks” home in five years, so we’re pretty far into the nomadic life.
Part of the year we are volunteer camp hosts – living and working in well-chosen state or national parks for months at a time. This year we’ve logged 14,000 miles since September; at the time of this writing we are in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, and 3,000 miles from our point of origin. The camping part is mostly idyllic as we seek out special places. The traveling part has its ups and downs.
This lifestyle works well
with my style of bereavement. I have been able to return to sites where we went with Kiki in earlier travels, and I feel closer to her in those places. We have returned to meaningful spots, and discovered new ones. We’ve sprinkled her ashes (which we call fairy dust), and spoken her name into the wind.
On the road, I have been able to isolate, which is my go-to. However, should I fear that I will forget how to talk to people, there are always friendly people in campgrounds.
During these brief, often superficial connections, I anticipate the question about kids. When it’s a short conversation with someone I’ll never see again, I often say I have a daughter back in Massachusetts. Most people quickly return to talking about themselves. With people that I’m making more of a connection with, I tell them about Kiki. Sometimes I hear about their losses in return. Often people are uncomfortable. They mumble a few platitudes and scram. Other times there can be a deeper connection. This spring we met another camp-hosting couple who lost a child, and made an immediate bond.
I am very present as Kiki’s father. Tina and I talk about her all the time, often memories, but also about what she would currently think of people, places, and things. Kiki’s opinions still count in our world. Her preferences are considered. The other day Tina said, “Keek would be mortified that Timothée Chalamet is serious about Kylie Jenner.” I had to agree.
Rituals that keep her front and center are observed daily by me, whether it’s wearing a Pikachu hoodie, a Totoro necklace, or pocketing my little black felt bag containing special keepsakes. There are pictures and mementos all over the camper. I write letters to her, letting her know how I’m feeling and what we’re doing. I’m up to 48 pages. Being already heavily tattooed, I am now turning my chest into a memorial piece. As far as religion, I keep it simple. My god is a 25-year-old girl.
Twenty-five years ago I quit
my job in Ft. Lauderdale to devote more time to my family. I left a career that was turning me into a person I did not want to be. It was a brave thing to do. Our parents questioned my sanity, and most of our friends were puzzled. The brave part for me was being in my 40’s, quitting a good professional job, leaving our suburban home and heading off into the wilds to travel the country. Tina was incredibly brave, as she was tossing aside a comfortable life, with friends and family nearby, to head into the unknown with her newly unhinged husband. At age three, Kiki was cool with it. She loved taking trips in our little trailer and at that age, we were her favorite people.
What started out as a little trip turned into a six-month family adventure. One of our favorite stops was Bodie, California, just down the road from Yosemite. Bodie is a ghost town above the tree line, once the wildest mining town in the West. It is the most intact ghost town in existence, and a state historic park.
Above the tree line means that nothing higher than sagebrush is growing, and it’s pretty bleak. It’s also a magical place: a ghost town with many intact buildings, including a saloon with bottles behind the bar and a pool table, a schoolhouse with desks and books, yards with wagons, sleds and even a few sunbaked cars.
Kiki and I tore through Bodie pretending to be Calamity Jane and Billy the Kid. I lifted her up to look through some of the higher windows and she wanted to see everything. We played there for hours. I believe that day at the ghost town gave Keek her appreciation for all things spooky and bizarre.
Yesterday Tina and I revisited
Bodie. Driving there, I realized another brave thing about my 41-year old self. The last miles of the road to Bodie are terrifying: narrow washboard dirt with sheer drops. I have no memory of being bothered by it then, but this year, the older me was driving 15 mph and blowing my horn at every curve.
So many of the places we have revisited on this trip have dramatically changed, scrambling my memories and altering the experience. The past and present mix together. But the thing about a historical park is that nothing has changed in the 25 years since we were last there. It was as though little Kiki was around every corner. It may be the closest I’ve felt to her since she died.
There is a line attributed to an unknown girl who wrote in her diary, on the eve of her family’s departure West, “Goodbye God, I’m going to Bodie.” This phrase was, of course, adopted into our family lexicon. I can still hear a certain three-year-old saying it to get a laugh.⁜
Update: NO/MADness
I’m no longer just a guest writer here. I’ll be jumping into Substack on a regular basis. I’m a modern day nomad, doing something a little crazy, so my newsletter is called NO/MADness.
I’ll be writing about the nomadic life, RVing, punk rock, monsters, and vintage Volkswagens. There could be stories from my childhood in Africa or about how I fold my clothes, cool Temu finds, and various strange things I become obsessed with.
In my previous career, I wrote volumes in therapy notes, case updates, psych evals and court paperwork, all for a specific purpose and audience. That is not writing, it’s documentation. Now I will be putting my words together in a new way, for a broader audience. It should be fun. Hope you will join me!
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