There is no greater remedy for too much distance from your family than to put yourself in a small, enclosed space with them — like, for instance, a car — for a week. Three days after I arrived home from New Zealand, my parents and I packed up the car and drove to Ohio together to attend my cousin’s wedding.
Mention “family road trip” to almost anyone and you’ll likely get a blend of mixed reactions. These trips bring out the best and the worst of a family. I hadn’t seen mine since I left for Antarctica last September and I was looking forward to this time together with eagerness — tempered with a touch of apprehension.
The ritual family road trip has not changed much since my childhood. We get up at the crack of dawn, stuffing suitcases and last-minute packing into the car as the sun struggles over the horizon. Today we pack fewer crayons (I’m assumed to be more self-entertaining now than I was when I was 7), and I join my parents in blearily packing lunches for the road. But then I automatically slide into my long-held place in the back seat. Some things — like that birth-order pecking order of who sits where — never change with age.
Other things definitely are different, though — for instance, I’ve become accustomed to driving on the left side of the road while in New Zealand. I yell as my dad turns out onto the highway, thinking that we are headed straight for oncoming traffic. That wakes us all up.
We talk as the miles tick by. Despite the wonders of modern communication, it’s amazing how much was missed in my absence. These stories come out, one after another, as we trace the white and yellow lines of the highway with our wheels.
One of the staples of driving through southern Maine has always been the requisite stop at L.L. Bean in Freeport. This is a comforting stop; the store is large, open at all hours, and filled with the familiar scents of tents, canvas and boot leather. As a college student coming home on a long drive from New York, I would still stop at L.L. Bean, partially out of habit, and partially to nap in the tent displays — a trick I learned as a kid.
Crossing the Piscataqua River into the states beyond Maine marks a change. The lanes are more abundant, the traffic faster, and in some states, they don’t even let you pump your own gas. The magnitude of these differences is confirmed when my father goes to order a coffee in New York.
“I’d like a coffee, please,” he tells the Starbucks cashier.
“What kind of coffee?”
“Black, caffeinated”
“Well sir, we have a lot of options.”
“Just coffee. Plain coffee. Hot. In a cup, please.” My dad understands full well that Starbucks has a scoreboard of options, but obstinately considers straight black brew to be the only beverage worth calling “coffee” and ignores all other variations.
The cashier eyes Dad as though he was being terribly difficult. The line built up behind him and people shifted impatiently.
“Kenyan? Sumatra? The house brew?”
“Fine.”
“And what size would you like? Grande, tall ?”
“Excuse me?”
Finally my dad leaves the kiosk, his coffee — black and unadulterated — in his hand and exasperation on his face. “She wanted to know if I wanted a tall dark coffee,” he tells me. “I asked her if this was a dating service or a coffee shop. After I paid, the woman in line behind me reeled off what sounded like a string of French cuss words. The cashier told her ‘That’ll be $4.99.’”
“What’d you get?” he asks my mom.
“I got a ‘Laddie.’” She said, eyes dancing as she took a sip of her latte.
He snorted. “See,” he said. “Sounds more like a dating service than a coffee shop.”
Hundreds of miles later and by the time we’re nearly home, any feeling of distance that I had from my family is gone. We have told innumerable stories, laughed ourselves to tears, bickered in irritation, and shared companionable silences with no sound but the turning of the car wheels.
As I stagger out of the car and stretch my legs, I vow loudly not to drive anywhere again for at least a year — if I can’t bike there, I’m not going. But I smile at my mother as I say it, and we both know the truth about these long family road trips — it’s more about the shared journey than it is about the destination.
Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor and Vassar College in New York, shares her experiences with readers each Friday. For more about her adventures, go to the BDN Web site: bangordailynews.com or e-mail her at madams@bangordailynews.net.