Day One, but the rest will be on paper.

Ship’s Log

Day One

Woke at six, smelling skunk.  Sure that some member of the crew had fallen victim. Came into living quarters to find all at ease, skunk strike far away.

Made coffee.  Bitter, but drinkable.  Surprised co-captain by touching coffee maker at such an early hour. 

Folded laundry. 

Sorted laundry by owner, then placed folded laundry in vicinity of final destinations.  

Delivered first mate to her bus stop.

Home now, preparing to meditate for ten minutes, stretch ten minutes, then study for French exam.

This is an exercise in holding myself accountable for taking care of business.  Part of that business includes making happy happen, but it can’t happen if life piles up in the corners.  Clean clothes, trimmed small-person fingernails, finished paperwork, and comfortable places to sit make happy easier.  

Onward with the day, fully prepared for the happy to hit, any minute.  

EVERYTHING AND A STICK

Let’s get in the car and go.  Everything can wait.  We’ll take them along, our beloveds.  The cat even likes a drive.

Pack one bag.  We can get the rest where we land, and not bother with the what-ifs. If the weather is wet, we’ll find ponchos.  If it’s hot, we’ll just wear less of whatever we packed.  Let’s stay out of the cold, okay?

I have everything ready in my head, everything we need to be gone for as long as we want to be gone.  I know where to get it all, from shelter to a stove to comfortable places to sleep.  Everything hides somewhere in this very house, or at least in the basement of another.

Give me time to gather, please, before you announce your desire to move along.  The  vehicle will hold everything and then some.  We are in no hurry.  Choose carefully what you really need for sincere comfort and pleasure, and I will handle the big picture stuff.

Bring your own pillow. I can’t pick a pillow for anyone but myself, can you?  My own mother can’t understand what makes a good pillow good to me, and I don’t know why my own daughter likes the pillow she needs every night.

Do you have a bear or a doggie or a piggy?  We’ll need those friends, too.  The real dog will want his blankie, now that he’s chosen a blankie.  The cats require places to sleep and places to poop and possibly a great deal of catnip to stay mellow.

 

 

Travel, for me, means movement.  Arrival ends travel, unless something waits for us, someone wants to see us, and we are expected.  To be expected and happily anticipated is a blessing.

Even without a destination, the art of moving from place to place feels like a gift.  New things to see out the windows are gifts.  Strange trees, surprising views, shocking smells through the open windows will make us happy.

Consider carefully what you would put into your own bag, while we wait here under this roof.  In my backpack, I will carry scarves and dresses and the softest sweater I can find.  I require a good hat, a Tilley if I have my pick, and more than one swimsuit.  Do you need a favorite pair of jeans, or will we skirt around the cold and damp?  In winter, I dream of a place without cold or damp, and blue jeans are punishment.  I choose something looser, with pockets, if I must wear pants at all.

Also in my bag goes a blank, big book and pencils.  A glue stick is essential for maps and leaves. If space allows, I like the big stick for balancing when I walk in slippery places.  I’ve fallen enough for a lifetime, and my walking stick might as well be a security blanket.  Shells and rocks must come home as precious souvenirs in the smallest of quantities, and sometimes they stink.  Ziplock baggies solve that problem.  What other oddities make us feel at home away from home?  How about a soprano recorder?  I think we all know a song or two, and maybe one of us will remember how to read sheet music, to expand our playlist.

The picnic blanket stays in the car always, with the corkscrew and the cutting board and the kettle.  You carry a kettle, too?  So, you understand.

Those things and a very sharp knife make life on the road livable and pleasurable.  I have traveled alone and with companions; a good companion changes a trip into a holiday, while a bad companion turns the road to anywhere into hell.

I know who needs more space than the cabin of the biggest van can provide, and they stay home or meet me there, now.  I’ve also learned who causes a need for separate hotel rooms or a separate tent on the other side of the campsite.  In a way, these are good fences that make good “neighbors”, and make the morning after so much more pleasant.  If you snore, you’re on your own at bedtime, unless you snore so adorably that the sound makes me giggle in the middle of the night.  You know who you are.

Winter and school and work keep us here, for now.  Summer seems far, far away, but when it comes, let’s get in the car and go.  We can decide where to go when we get into the car, and feel adventurous and spontaneous and wealthy in our janky little Jeep, because we’ll be together.

And we’ll have everything, just like we do now.  We have so much of everything, because have Us.

And a backpack.

OURS, WITH FRINGE

My name is Lisa, and I care what I drive.

This confession, admission, comes on the heels of acquiring a replacement for the sedan purchased just two years ago, in the aftermath of leaving my husband.  That car was and is a very good car bought for a very good price, and it’s in fine shape and has low miles for a Honda that’s been properly maintained.  I’d considered selling it last year, but the whole process gets complicated when a replacement ride can only be obtained with the profit from the sale of the current ride.

My cousin solved that catch-22 by selling me a Jeep on very gentle terms.  This Jeep, I love.  So far.  Snow and four wheel drive go well together.  We’d have been stuck last week, truly homebound, if the Honda was our only option.  It would crawl through the drifts, but I do not like the sensation of riding in a two-ton sleigh.  The Jeep does not slide.  The Jeep moves with confidence, and my only concern is about the other drivers with whom I must share slippery roads.  Even with excellent traction and a nice wide wheel base, the Jeep and I move with caution, deliberately.  Deliberate doesn’t describe some drivers, especially drivers of enormous, growling trucks that I know push through the snow on the power of rear wheel drive and testosterone and overconfidence.  At least the diesel engines get troublesome at low temps, I’ve heard.

I care what I drive for practical reasons. My vanity does not come into play.  The Honda looked sort of sporty, low to the ground, two doors, a smooth flow of sparkly gold steel that loved to go fast.  The only two speeding tickets I’ve ever earned were in that car.  Men of a certain age smiled and waved and honked when I drove it while I wore sunglasses.  Something about the sunglasses set them off, I think, because without sunglasses, the honking and waving dramatically decreased.  So, it was kind of a cool-looking ride, to some, especially bored truckers with a good view down into the driver’s side window.  The Honda garnered compliments.

Everyone likes compliments, but I disagreed with the nice people who flattered the car. The problem?  I don’t like hitting my head when I get out of a car, I don’t like the idea of glass up above where steel should be, and I think regular car trunks are a good way to forget what I’m carrying.  Not much fit into it, anyway. Unloading the Honda for the almost-last time, I discovered a forgotten tool box, a very ripped yoga mat, three blankets, the carrying case for some jumper cables but no jumper cables, and many Goodwill-bound bags of mystery clothing, among great clods of earth from the time I dug daffodils on the side of the road in Kentucky.  Now, I know the same trunk holds just my good suitcase (unpacked, how odd), that tool box, and a bunch of Keurig coffee pods that I can’t use now.  The damned coffee machine broke.

We, the current residents of The Charming Wreck, can all fit into the Jeep together, at once.  The dog can sit in the back end, where a trunk would be in an average vehicle.  This simple convenience changes the game, opens up opportunities for travel-with-dog, an idea whose time has come.  He has good manners, and I know he’s ready for some sightseeing.

My small person believes that two people can sleep in the back, an idea I had not suggested but I’d considered.  I like the way she thinks. Living in a van down by the river is a concept that crosses the minds of more that a few of my female friends, so close to the edge of the possibility of poverty, and I appreciate a vehicle large enough to accommodate a mattress.  A part of my brain has always been reserved for worst-case scenarios and how to make a worst into an adventure.  My bags stay mentally packed after eighteen moves, some movement by choice and some by necessity. Someday, we’ll go home forever, but for now, we are here and happy.  I know what I’d grab if the house caught fire, and what we’d need to get by until home happens.  We don’t need much.

However, we wouldn’t live down by the river.  We’d get ourselves to a beach, and make a worst case scenario into a colorful gypsy-esque life chapter.  I’m on the market for a sturdy but cheap footlocker to hold the basic gear for such an event.  Curtains for the windows would be a stylish touch, and screens to keep out mosquitoes seem essential. Carrying warm things and comfortable things and cooking things is common sense in any life situation, (see any bug-out youtube advice video), but choosing those things for function and form makes for good fun.  That foot locker will get the paint job of its lifetime, and so will the cargo pod that may or may not still be under my ex’s back porch.  He doesn’t use it, and he’ll be glad to see it gone.

I care about what I drive and I take care of what I drive.  To be nickeled and dimed feels better than to be dollared to death.  The Honda’s needed its fair share of belts and parts, but I can count on it to keep on keeping on when I pass it along.  The Jeep soon needs brakes, and in another ten thousand miles, I’ll take care of that.  Spend to maintain, not to attain. We have everything we need, some things in triplicate.

Except for a little trailer.  Maybe someday, a little camper.  Maybe we’ll make a little trailer into a little camper!

Too much?

For now, my small person loves riding high in the back seat of the Jeep.  Her view has improved dramatically, and the climb into her spot no longer requires her to be a contortionist.  The door handles vex her, but these handles require a bit more muscle than she owns at eight years old.  I just open both doors on the driver’s side and tell her to climb across, problem solved until pushing a stiff button and simultaneously pulling a heavy door falls in can-do range.  This boxy old Jeep with rusty rims won’t win any beauty contests, but we think it’s rather cool.  When I deemed the weather too nasty to put that beloved small person on a bus without seat belts–INSANITY, NO?–she was excited to be seen getting out of a life-sized Tonka truck.

She cares, too.  She liked opening her own back door and climbing down with more grace that she could ever muster in the clamber out of the back seat of a coupe.

I think we’ll go fabric shopping together, and she can practice her sewing skills by making tiny curtains for our gypsy caravan, with trim of bobbly pom-pom fringe.  The Jeep will feel so stylish, when we get to that beach.

NEVER MIND ABOUT WINTER

Two hours on the couch with my thoughts and on the floor with a daughter with a sketchbook and building blocks, and life is good.  February drags on as always, but I’ve changed my mind about it in the span of a morning.

I watch travel TV  from home, where we are snowbound by choice.  My small person and I stay in until we can’t not trudge out to get art supplies and pay a bill, and maybe get a book that the library did not have yesterday.  Still, sitting in this warm house in pajamas feels best, for now.  She gathers bits of paper and ideas and consent: yes, we can get her cousin a necklace with a heart pendant for Valentine’s day, yes, the Grover Cleveland project can include flowers and glitter.  I gather minutes of comfort until real life shoves snow into our boots.  It’s deep out there today, but we have things to do.

This winter in the Midwest has given us good snow, the kind that lasts for more than a day.  We’ve been snowed in often enough to send the public schools into a scramble to add “instructional days”, which really means that the kids will lose a holiday or two, but only if the school board can agree with parents at a meeting in a few days.  I don’t care.  I just tick off the days until summer frees us from the grind of bus stops and homework and so much structure.  My small person and I do not like winter, a prison sentence of a season.  Spring sends us into the back yard to find green things, growing things, and sweet black dirt where seeds have the best chance to turn into flowers.  I keep my cold-hate to myself, but she pronounces her opinion in Crayola marker on bits of boxes waiting to be recycled: I hate winter, she writes but does not say because hate is a bad word here.  I see her silent words and I remember being her size and knowing that the trees would never be green again.  February is a hand-chapping struggle.

We sit in classrooms and at work and on this couch, and we wait, watching for the trees to wake up.  When the trees trust the tilt of the earth and brave the chilly air with their new leaves, smiles bloom among us.  The houseplants migrate to the porch.  The cat might even go outside this spring, if we trust her to stay away from the terrifying street out front.  For now, she stays in, with us, where we know we are all safe in this sweet old house.  This house makes winter less so.  The small person’s bright classroom in its strange old building with tall tall windows makes winter less so.  The wait feels less long when sunlight fills the rooms in which we wait.

Still, the travel TV does more harm than good.  Too much green, all out of season, and all out of reach, and the water on the TV is so blue and warm.  Palm trees grow in pots in Illinois.  So do lemon trees, thanks to sincere wishing by a small person right around Christmastime and a little sneakiness on my part help Santa prove a point.

This morning, we plotted a map from the back door to the sturdy new-old truck, from our driveway to the first stop on the errand list, with plenty of room for “let’s just go home already”.

Never mind about all of the winter-hating.  We are warm, safe, loved, together.  We have only a few more weeks before we burst into the green part of the year and into fewer hours bundled into whatever keeps us from freezing at the edges.  The windows will wrench open soon enough. Never mind about anything but this gift of a day with a sparkly little girl and later, a beautiful boy and his beautiful snow-loving dog.  We have everything.

Now it’s noon, when I had decided that the outside part of the day should begin.  Time to boot up, wrap up, trundle carefully into the bigger world, to find some flowers for Grover Cleveland.