I kept seeing those days getting marked off on the calendar and June 19th was inching closer. With each giant X Henry drew, my anxiety and excitement grew. Was I crazy? I swung between “this is a horrible idea” to “this will be amazing” until the day finally came and the car was packed. We left on a Monday morning not to return for six whole weeks. That is a long time away without the comforts and safety of HOME and my partner. Once you get on the road though, something inside you just changes.
Our first week on the road took us from Oregon to Wyoming with stops in Boise, Craters of the Moon NP, Arco, Yellowstone NP, Grand Tetons NP, Dubois, and Rock Springs.
I will say more about these beautiful spaces we passed through another time. This bit is about the places my mind passed through. Anger. Resentment. Love. Jealousy. Joy. Disappointment. From the first day I started counting the time and miles until I saw my Dad. 16 days. 2500 miles.
I grew up with two broken people as parents. Neither one of them healed or even on a path to figure it out. After my parents spilt when I was seven, my mom took first place for most disappointing parent. I kept her there on that pedestal until my dad passed. She bore most of my anger and bitterness and caused so much hurt that I just never took her down. She has her own story for another time. This trip is how I started to see that my dad was broken too. I never thought he was perfect, but I had cooked up quite the nice and neat story in my head and made him the hero. I had erased memory and altered history to make it so. Because honestly I had to in order to survive. To live through the really hard parts of my mom and her disease.
Week one of this trip was filled with an onslaught of conflicting feelings and memories. I started to see cracks in the story. Lots of “holy shit” mumbled under my breath. Things happen when you become a parent. You start comparing your parenting to that of your childhood. You start reliving memory. You often have to reparent a very under cared for part of yourself in order to properly parent your own child. I saw more of the ways that my dad was not the character I wrote him as. I also had to start preparing for the very real in person goodbye that would happen soon.
This is the real stuff of life. We are not all pretty pictures in scenic places. There is a real life that happens behind the scenery. We are anxious parents vigilantly keeping our kid safe and free at the same time. We are daughters grieving what we thought we had. We are adventurers who would sometimes rather be home. Tucked away.
This first week, I saw my son bloom. Seeing the great wide open through his eyes broke me clean through. I knew then that I would never stop breaking for him. I would never stop healing either. Not until the work was done. This long drive to say goodbye was a big first step.
Every warm ray of sunshine and inhale of sweetgrass is etched in my mind, from Portland to Rock Springs. Favorite moment of that week. Sitting in some grass on the sideline at the local Friday night rodeo in Dubois, WY. Listening to the sounds of strangers and hearing my kid laugh at the craziness of it all.
Blakes On The Road 