Highway to Hell

Driving across the country to get home for Christmas with no bathroom in sight

I am trying hard not to blame my husband for the fact that we’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a minivan somewhere in Texas with four female dependents, ages eight, seven, six, and three. It’s not his fault that the two oldest, most mature dependents lack opposable thumbs, are not tax deductible, and are shedding all over the back of the vehicle. It’s also not his fault that the two younger dependents require restroom stops so frequent that I’ve developed a compensatory addiction to beef jerky. Nor is it his fault that two of the dependents do not understand language, or that a third dependent vacillates between verbal and pre-verbal communication, depending on her state of mind. And it’s certainly not his fault that all four of the four dependents are whining, each at a different pitch, intensity, and volume.

But for some reason, it does feel like my husband’s fault that the loudest of the four dependents needs to go to the bathroom. She needs to go to the bathroom right now.

I check the traffic map on my phone and see a long stretch of red interstate, an inexplicable logjam in the middle of nowhere. My husband tells the kids that we probably aren’t going to reach the next exit for another hour, even though it’s only three miles away. So the best thing to do, he explains, is to relax, and hold it in until we get there.

“I CAN’T HOLD IT IN! I NEED TO POOP RIGHT NOW!”

The word “poop” instantly moves the chorus of whines up a register, like the dramatic key change at the end of a Disney ballad. But there is no way we’re pulling over right now. There’s not a tree or bush to hide behind for miles. Wrenching this particular dependent out of the car, into the cold winter air, and asking her to pull her pants down and squat in a ditch in full view of twenty cars? It isn’t an option. This is the moment we’ve been training for, I think. This is the moment that tests our mettle as parents, as people, as fearless leaders.

I shift into crisis mode. Crisis mode is cheerful and calm. Crisis mode, in this case, includes an upbeat, lighthearted narrative about how it’s no big deal to squat in the back of a moving minivan in the middle of Texas in order to defecate into a doggie waste bag. Doing so is not only private (relative to flashing two dozen interstate travelers), but it’s also safe (we are inching along at walking speed) and sanitary (compared to your average gas station bathroom, which we can’t get to anyway). It also obviates the need for either crapping in your pants or wiping your butt on some loose gravel and then sprinting to catch up with the family car.

My speech is rousing, so rousing that someone who didn’t know any better, someone from a foreign country or distant planet, might come away thinking that people shit into each other’s hands in moving vehicles all the time, just for fun.

But the dependent in question shakes her head. She is not taking a dump in the backseat of the minivan. She is not an animal, like some of these other passengers. She needs a bathroom, not a poop bag.

Ten minutes later, through tears, she agrees to try. A doggie bag is held open, very wide. No! She can’t do it. It’s too terrible. She returns to her seat and is strapped in again.

Five minutes after that, she yells out in agony. A catcher’s mitt is fashioned out of paper towels. A second attempt is made. But let’s be honest: despite the courageous, happy tone, many images are floating through our fearless leader’s mind as she holds the mitt in position. They are catastrophic images. The other dependents must be imagining the same things, because all three of them have become quiet and are averting their eyes, turning their gazes towards the barren landscape. One of the three announces that this wretched place is the hometown of former president George W. Bush Jr.

There is a moment of total silence. You could hear a pin drop. You could hear something a little heavier than a pin drop. Next, a flurry of wrapping and double bagging and triple bagging ensues. Toilet paper and antibacterial gel and antiseptic wipes are dispatched. Then, more antibacterial gel, until everything and everyone in the van is coated in a thin layer of disinfectant. The windows are rolled down, and a refreshing wave of winter air wafts through, sending a few stray dog hairs floating out across the Texas plains.

Once the windows are rolled up again, the passengers, perhaps invigorated by the cold air, marvel at the lack of a lingering stench, at the lack of mess or any other ill effect. The dependent in question announces that she feels way, way better. A strange sense of calm and borderline elation sets in.

“That made the whole trip totally worth it,” my husband says as I climb back into the passenger seat. That’s how your mind works when you’ve been driving for sixteen hours. Shitting in the car equals making memories that will last a lifetime.

Even though I’m feeling pretty heroic for pulling that off without a hitch, like my mettle was tested and I emerged victorious, some sick part of my brain says to me, “This whole thing is all his fault.”

We were booked on a plane departing out of Los Angeles International Airport on December 19 at six in the morning. At 4 a.m., my husband was charged with walking the dogs, briefly, in order to encourage them to do their business, since they’d be locked in the house until my brother picked them up early that afternoon. But my husband didn’t drink any coffee before he left with the dogs, so he lost track of time. He may have also lost track of his name and address and what the fuck he was supposed to be doing out there in the dark. After thirty minutes of wondering where he was and panicking and loading up the car with suitcases and sleeping kids, I finally remembered that he might have his cell phone on him. I took a deep breath. I would handle this diplomatically, so as not to upset the children.

“Where the fuck are you?”

“The stupid dogs won’t take a shit!” he replied.

“WE NEED TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW,” I bellowed into the phone.

He returned five minutes later. We locked the house. I spent the first ten minutes of our drive to the airport hissing at him that if he’s fucking senile without his fucking coffee then obviously he should drink his fucking coffee before he wanders around in the dark with the dogs and makes us miss our fucking flight. He spent that time hissing back that I should stop fucking freaking out over nothing and there was no fucking way we would miss our fucking flight. Then we drove in silence. I tried to imagine that we wouldn’t miss our flight. By the time we made it to the packed check-in line at the airport, though, and spotted the sign saying the cut-off for checking bags was forty-five minutes before each departure, I knew we were toast.

As we left the “Check in here” line and moved over to another, less promising one, the kids stopped babbling happily and started to whimper.

“Are we going to miss our flight?” my older daughter asked, her enormous eyes watering like an anime cartoon.

“You mean we aren’t going to Grammy’s house for Christmas?” my younger daughter screeched, her face crumpling in despair.

I stuttered, “We might… We’ll try… We don’t know yet…”

The travelers around me glared. The girls wailed and threw themselves on the floor. It was pure Greek tragedy.

That’s when I shifted from furious wife mode to fearless leader in crisis mode. “Look, we will probably miss our flight. But that’s OK! It’s totally fine.” Crisis mode is calm and happy. “They’ll put us on another flight—we’ll fly standby.” Yes. Because when families of four miss their flights out of LAX over the holidays, guess what happens? They fly standby. In fact, the major airlines keep four empty seats together on even their most booked planes, just so they can give those seats to the really fucking stupid people who like to stroll their dogs around in the dark for half an hour at four in the fucking morning instead of making it to the fucking airport on time.

I switched gears again. “And if that doesn’t work? They’ll book us on another flight, maybe one that leaves later tonight or tomorrow. We’ll just go home and relax and come back tomorrow.”

“I don’t want to come back tomorrow! I want to fly to Grammy’s house right now!” Both girls were wailing now. We were all sitting on the filthy airport floor, me hugging my crying girls, surrounded by our suitcases in the middle of an unmoving, unhappy line.

“And what if we can’t get on another flight?” my older daughter asked, apparently reading my panicked mind. “I want to go to North Carolina right now! I don’t want to stay here for Christmas.”

Under normal circumstances, this is the point at which you’d tell your kids to simmer down and stop acting like brats. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Heroic words were in order.

“Listen, listen. We are going to North Carolina, no matter what! OK? If we can’t get on a flight, you know what we’ll do instead? We’ll get in our minivan and just start driving. I’ve done it before. You just drive east for a long, long time, and eventually, guess what? You get to Grammy’s house!”

“I DON’T WANT TO DRIVE! I WANT TO FLY ON A PLANE!”

“I know you like planes. But I just love driving across the country, because you get to see the whole entire country, not just lame clouds. You’ve never even seen the whole country before, have you? It’s amazing! The landscape changes constantly. You go through the desert, and then you get to the Great Plains, where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived. You pass through so many different states­—New Mexico and Texas and Georgia. It’s so relaxing, just looking out the window all day. You wouldn’t believe how beautiful the sky looks out there. Especially at 6 a.m., when you wake up early just to drive? It’s all pink and purple and you’re listening to good music, and then you stop at McDonald’s — they’re all over the place, even in the middle of nowhere! — and you eat an Egg McMuffin.”

Our fearless leader really likes Egg McMuffins.

And it’s true that she also loves driving across the country. I’ve done it many times before, on nightmarish marathon trips with my family as a kid, with college friends and boyfriends, and once with my oldest dependent, a yellow collie mix who was just eight months old at the time and spent most of the trip with her nose stuck out the window.

This might be why it was so easy to expound on the joys of cross-country travel, to distract the kids as we passed through the snaking security lines, as we watched our first standby possibility go up in smoke, as we stood in a long line for customer service and then went to another gate and failed to fly standby a second time. At least fifteen other standby passengers were in front of us. We could do this all day long, I thought, and never get on a flight. How would the kids like spending the entire day at the airport, weathering one disappointment after another?

At this point, there was a short break in my narrative, so I could step away from the group and cry for a minute or two. I felt so guilty for putting my kids through this trauma and screwing everything up, mostly by marrying an idiot with no fucking brain in his pathetic pea-head. But I couldn’t even yell at the pea-headed man, not only because it would upset the kids, but because he obviously knew he was to blame for this mess. He had gone from his original, loud “this is no big deal” state to a much quieter “I hate myself and want to die” one, and I needed him to live so that I wouldn’t have to take the kids to the bathroom by myself every time.

After a few minutes of sobbing, I pulled myself together and continued my story. It was starting to work, too, because the kids stopped howling and moaning. Instead, the infinite delights of car travel were starting to sink in. The sights! The sounds! The around-the-clock DVDs! The tacky state-shaped souvenirs! The impromptu snacks! “It’s a real adventure,” I kept saying.

This may be why, by the time all four of us were confirmed on a flight to North Carolina on December 23, both kids were convinced that driving across the country for three days was a much better choice than flying. Who wanted to wait around for four days and then fly? That would be torture. Instead, we could go home, grab a few clothes (our bags were on their way to North Carolina already), put the dogs in the car, and go. The dogs wouldn’t have to go to boarding. We’d get there even sooner. It would be a real adventure.

In other words, sometimes fearless leaders in crisis mode are a little bit too convincing.

Naturally, the trip was far more harrowing and tedious than I’d made it out to be at the airport. There was a brief period of calm after the unfortunate incident in Texas, but once we got to Meridian, Mississippi, the mood suffered significantly. The kids were angry at us for tricking them into this purgatorial journey. My husband was in reasonably good spirits but had assiduously avoided discussing his early-morning mistake. I knew this was what he did when he felt guilty, but I was still annoyed in spite of my best intentions to get over it. After three long days of being gung-ho and trying to rally everyone to stay positive and embrace the spirit of adventure, my nerves were starting to fray.

Some cross words were exchanged somewhere in the middle of Alabama. There was some yelling, and some small people learned an important lesson about how yelling is bad, but every now and then you just can’t help it. Like, for example, when someone does something stupid and he won’t admit it? And then he snaps at you at the drive-thru like that? Just for pointing out that maybe a little girl should have oatmeal rather than her third biscuit in three days? For him to be a dick over that when you’ve been so fucking nice for days now? That’s called MAKING SOME PRETTY BAD FUCKING CHOICES.

After the yelling, there were tears. Then, there were apologies all around. Everyone claimed to feel much better after that, except, admittedly, the yellow collie mix in the back of the minivan, who still looked pretty upset and refused to chew on the rawhide she was offered, leaving her far less sensitive canine peer to steal it for herself.

But by the time we arrived at my mom’s house in North Carolina and were assigned to an upstairs bedroom — with the kids on an air mattress and the dogs in their beds on the floor, every inch of space covered by some living being, every night a chorus of snores — we were used to it. We slept soundly. It almost seemed crazy, letting your four dependents sleep in separate rooms, away from you. We had become a peaceable tribe. Sort of.

After Christmas, we still had to drive another 3,000 miles to get home.

The trip back was not without incident. The windshield wipers malfunctioned in the middle of a rainstorm in Birmingham. In a particularly disgusting gas-station restroom just past Shreveport, the seat fell off the toilet. In a restaurant parking lot outside Dallas, my younger daughter refused to put her shoes on, so she had to spend a tense time in the car with me and the dogs, while my husband and older daughter ate some unexpectedly good Mexican food inside.

Even so, we got better at our travel routine. The kids mostly slept through the night. The dogs stopped growling at every sound from the neighboring motel rooms. We learned to scout ahead for local restaurants on our phones. We made the kids look out the window for a few hours in the morning, and we figured out a way to get them to nap every afternoon — by telling a story, but only when everyone’s eyes were closed.

The kids saw the Mississippi River for the first time and were excited to see it again on the way back. They ate their first fried-chicken biscuit in Louisiana. We played “I Spy” and sang along to Katy Perry songs. We each had a giant steak at a good steakhouse in Abilene on New Year’s Eve, and on the first morning of 2013, we ate waffles in the shape of the state of Texas. By the time we reached the border of California, we were starting to see the trip not as a catastrophe, but as a smashing success.

To be fair, we also ate mostly junk food the whole time. My older daughter watched the first Harry Potter movie nine times in a row. My younger daughter subsisted primarily on chicken nuggets. I gained ten pounds from sitting still for two weeks, only exerting myself to stuff more fried chicken and biscuits into my face. If we’d continued traveling for just a few more days, we all might’ve become anemic.

Instead, we pulled up to our house in Los Angeles on January 2 just as the sun was setting, exhausted and relieved to be home.

But it felt strange to sleep in separate rooms. It felt odd to wake up the next morning without hitting the road. I couldn’t help but miss being packed into a small space with everyone. I’d learned a lot about my kids from hearing every word that came out of their mouths for two weeks straight. Usually, they’re at school and then off in the house somewhere, playing their own games. Thanks to that enforced proximity, we understood each other a little better.

After the blowout and subsequent apologies in Alabama, I felt grateful for my husband. He took on the whole trip without hesitation, and we operated surprisingly well as a team, as fearful leaders and clueless tour guides. We agreed on what was important (locating tasty food, making sure the kids had fun, getting enough sleep), and we agreed on what wasn’t (sanitary conditions, privacy, vitamin C).

And thanks to the fact that he’s fucking senile without his fucking coffee, we’d had a real adventure.