Scene from a Road Trip

We’ve driven this car ride probably a hundred times, the interminably straight line between our house and my husband’s hometown, the hundreds of miles that stretch across flat plains, carved out between corn fields that run into more cornfields that occasionally back up to soybean fields. Eleven hours in the car. Each way. Four kids in the back of the van, asking, “How many more minutes?” Patient dog, incurably happy to be with us, drooling as she smiles a floppy-tongued grin.

The kids fight, or sing, or beg for snacks doled out from our cooler that I’ve packed before we left. We pass the time, remembering our favorite scenes from movies, or talking about current events. We fall into a pleasant kind of rhythm, between naps, then eating, then noisy, raucous laughter. Alphabet games as the bulletin boards whiz by. I like to guess where the other cars on the road are going, or where they’ve been.

These eleven hour stints are the barometer of our marriage. If there’s been a fight just before our departure, the eleven hours can seem like weeks. There have been long, quiet hours of angry silence, punctuated by perfunctory requests for a kleenex or a look at the map. 

But there can be those nice silences, those silences that signify that while, we may not have anything pressing to discuss at the moment, we are just as happy to sit side by side,watching the landscape fly past our car windows.

Oh. And there’s always roadkill to talk about. So. Much. Roadkill.

Inevitably, in the last few hours of the trip home, slap-happy-ness sets in. The kids have had just about enough of the seatbelt, the awful food and lukewarm drinks out of their water bottles, and we’re all anxious to see our house and play with toys and take a hot shower and get down to our at-home-ness.

“Do you know all the words to the ‘Love Boat’ theme?” my husband asks.

“What?”

“You heard me,” he smiles. “Do you know it? Can you sing it? All the words?”

This definitely sounds like a challenge. And having grown up in the 80s, I’ve pretty much got this in the bag.

“Of course!” I blurt out.

“I don’t think you can,” he says.

I straighten in my seat. Quickly shedding my two-lane highway coma, I feel my competitive spirit coming alive.

“Oh, I can,” I say, with sass in my voice. “And I will.”

It was glorious, my friends. Somewhere from the dark recesses of my memory, I saw it all: the sparkling blue waters of the ocean, the smiling faces of Doc Bricker, Julie with the clipboard, and Gopher, waiting to grab my luggage. I filled my lungs and sang it full throttle while he grinned, shaking his head but keeping his eyes vigilantly on the road. I sang it all, right down to the little “Dee-da dee-da da da das” played by the synthesized trumpets between the phrases.

“Wow,” he says, shaking his head. “I didn’t think you could do it.”

I sit back and adjust my seatbelt. I smile to myself, as we settle back into a comfortable silence. I look out the window. I see rows of corn, and a poor skunk at the side of the road, whose early demise left him in an unnatural position facing the unforgiving sun.

Under his breath, I hear my husband humming. I smile when I recognize the opening bars of the Love Boat theme. I have the feeling he’s going to have that tune in his head all the way to the state line.

“How many more minutes?” asks a tiny voice from the back seat.