It Was the Best Thing We Ever Did
How We Took the Plunge and Became a Traveling Family
Hello Friends,
We’re in New Hampshire now, and we’ll be here eight more weeks before starting another season on the road.
This letter is a story about the very beginning of our life as a traveling family, back when we were young parents, ready to break free from the suburban grind.
You can read or listen to the audio. Thanks for coming along!
Wasn’t it the best thing we ever did?
Even though we were still young then, and believed our lives would be long and full of chances, even so, we said let’s do it now, because we might get old and lose our nerve.
Eric might say it all started on a Friday evening at the beach near our house in South Florida. We were up in the lifeguard tower with three-year-old Kiki, and the darkening sky was pink, the ocean purple at the horizon, calm and glassy.
Back then, we did that a lot; walking on the sand at dusk, pulling Kiki in her wagon, sitting on the splintery wood steps, talking about our days. My day at home with Kiki, his day running the mental health center.
“This morning they told me I’m out of step with management. And then Lance Bates tried to strangle me.”
“What are you talking about? What does that mean?”
“I don’t think I can do this job anymore. It’s all just about billing Medicaid and I’m not helping anyone.”
And maybe that was the beginning,
because a few months later the three of us left our old life behind and then we were crossing the country, towing a 16-foot travel trailer, and we wouldn’t live in a house again for almost four years.
But I would say it started two years earlier,
in a motel outside Asheville, North Carolina. Kiki was zipped in her Cinderella sleeping bag on the king-sized bed and we were sitting on the bathroom floor with the door shut, a bottle of tequila, plastic cups and the ice bucket lined up on the bathmat between us.
“This isn’t the right place.”
“I know, it’s just a regular town.”
Why had we thought Asheville would be the answer? That was the year when everyone in South Florida was talking about Asheville – how you could buy a house for practically nothing, how it was a real community and not just endless development linked by highways.
In what was probably a rash move, Eric had quit his job and we’d gone to look at Asheville.
I think I’d expected we would arrive and look down from the Blue Ridge Mountains to see an idyllic town spread out below like a page from Busytown, with cats in white uniforms delivering milk and pandas driving school busses.
We’d spent the day circling Asheville, looking at houses we couldn’t afford. A Sesame Street album played on endless repeat. Kiki sat in her carseat drugged by the music. And when, for the twentieth time, Kermit sang “I don’t want to live on the moon,” I had to turn away from Eric so he wouldn’t see my tears.
I didn’t want to move there. It would be the same life we already had in Florida, with fewer strip malls and less traffic, but without the night-blooming jasmine wafting through the screens and the turquoise ocean and green parrots in our mango tree. That night in the motel, neither of us wanted to be the first to say we’d been wrong.
“I don’t think I want to do this.”
“I know. But if we don’t move, I’m going to have to ask for my job back. I’m going to have to grovel.”
And then we started drinking tequila,
and we weren’t sad anymore, because we were talking about how maybe we could get a camper and take a long trip, just drive around until we found the perfect place. The next day, on the way back to Florida, we pulled off the highway and went to an RV dealer. We pretended we might buy one.
We toured the brand-new trailers with the salesman and sat on the beds, peeked in tiny bathrooms, compared mini kitchens. Kiki was vibrating with excitement as she climbed the little steps, each camper like a playhouse. Back on I-95, rolling through South Carolina and Georgia, we talked about the traveling we’d do someday.
When we got home, Eric called his boss and asked for his job back. The following year was the year he got fat, because there was nothing to look forward to except lunch at the Golden Corral.
But maybe the beginning was way before Asheville.
Maybe it started in 1964,
when my mother convinced my father to take a month off from his new job, rent a Ford Dreamer truck camper, and head West.
I was two, my brothers ten and eleven. I don’t remember much about the trip except the time my mother lit the camper’s gas stove and there was a huge whoosh, and flames, and I’ve been uneasy about propane ever since.
I don’t remember sitting up front in the truck between my parents, seeing the Great Plains and the Tetons, or riding in the back with Mike and Todd. I don’t remember the Grand Canyon, but I know all about the trip because we talked about it for years afterward. I’m sure it was fun, traveling in that rolling playhouse with my big brothers. I can imagine my mother taking her turn at the wheel, singing show tunes at top volume. I think maybe we were all happy then.
There were other family trips. But it was the big camper trip that we never stopped talking about. It marked us all; the adventure and freedom of that one month on the road. I don’t think any of us really got over it. I know I never did.
That night on the lifeguard tower,
when we talked about Eric’s career burnout and the deadening grind of suburban life, I felt a strange wave of excitement. We would do something different.
That night, there was so much I didn’t know, starting with how we would find an old trailer for $800, fix it up, and make it into our first rolling home. I didn’t know we’d find a way to work on the road, or that getting rid of our possessions would bring us freedom.
I didn’t yet know how many times I’d be scared, and homesick for the home I’d let go of so easily, or how we’d always know our time together on the road was the one best thing we did with our lives. ⁜
Today is a perfect New Hampshire summer day. Brilliant blue sky, 76° and breezy.
Early this morning I sat outdoors under a blanket by a fire. It’s a four-day fire in honor of my cousin Jeff, who died two days ago. It’s burning at his sister’s house, near where we’re staying, tended in his memory by people who love him.
A friend of Kiki’s came for lunch. She told us about a day she and Keek went to the ocean. It was hot, and Keek stayed in the water by herself for a long time. I can picture her there, bobbing in the dark greenish water. I know that beach, how the waves come in long low tubular rollers from way out. Now it’s my memory, one I can replay in my mind. I don’t get to have any new memories of Keek, so this feels like a gift.
We ate sandwiches outside, under that super-saturated cobalt sky. I knew I was getting a sunburnt face but the heat felt good. The birds were thick at the feeder, barn swallows swooped through our trailer courtyard, and two chipmunks kept chasing each other across the grass. Afterward I was tired. The visit felt like too much. I didn’t want to feel those feelings. It was suddenly too hard to be strong.
I lay down on the bed in Keek’s trailer. It’s a white bed in a little white room with periwinkle blue trim. Windows on three sides surrounding the bed make it feel like a boat, and the blue eyelet curtains were rippling in the breeze. I lay curled on the bed and let the sunshine warm my back.
It will always be like this, I thought. It will always, always hurt, that she’s not here.
It takes work to keep going. To know we will feel this pain, and still pull it together and live another day
The sun is golden and hot now at 5:30 in the afternoon, slanting through the windows next to the bed that’s like a boat.
Tonight some friends are coming by. It will be fun and we’ll laugh. And the fire will continue nearby, burning for Jeff, and some of us will take turns tending it.
There’s nothing I can do but carry the pain today. I didn’t know life would turn out to hurt this much. But it does, sometimes it just does.
A lot of us have something hard to carry.
Thank you for reading or listening to Letters From Turkey Town. There are three link buttons at the bottom of each post: Like, Share, and Comment. It would be so great if you clicked on one! Your participation helps me reach more people, and allows me to know you’re reading this newsletter.
I hope you have enjoyed this issue!
Love,
Tina
Oh Wait! One More Thing!
If you’ve made it this far, you might like this poem. It’s got a wistful vibe I associate with memories of the traveling years, especially now that Eric and I are older and have returned to the road. It inspired the little painting at the beginning of this letter.
Once In the 40's by William Stafford We were alone one night on a long road in Montana. This was in winter, a big night, far to the stars. We had hitched, my wife and I, and left our ride at a crossing to go on. Tired and cold—but brave—we trudged along. This, we said, was our life, watched over, allowed to go where we wanted. We said we’d come back some time when we got rich. We’d leave the others and find a night like this, whatever we had to give, and no matter how far, to be so happy again.
My partner died a few weeks ago and the raw pain I feel in his absence is unbearable at times. I wonder how I’ll make it through this moment, this hour, this day, this night. Reading about your pain while I’m feeling mine makes me feel less alone. Our experiences, while different, are also similar: the awful wild grief of a beloved, left much too soon.
17 years ago coming September I lost my 23 year old daughter Hilary to depression. Somehow I’m still getting up every day and living my life. Thank you for sharing. It’s my story too and that of every parent who has lost a child. The details are different but the theme is the same💔