Trippin’
Screaming ninety miles per hour up Interstate-5, it occurs to me that I am many kinds of dad, but Road Trip Dad is probably my favorite. To be honest, I have always known I would someday be someone’s father. Looking back over my existence to this point somewhere between Bakersfield and nowhere in particular, I see now it’s just who I have always been, a part for which I have rehearsed my entire life. Rubber-faced and goofy, Road Trip Dad is perhaps little more than a bit player in this teeming tragicomedy, but his cameos usually steal the show.
Start with the fact that he only shows up in the context of increasingly rare and eminently fleeting vacation time. Everyone is happy to see him, a gift Regular Dad is only intermittently assured. Regular Dad is all about Monday morning, while Road Trip Dad is a Friday night that might never end. On the road, I get to be the flinty, yet benevolent captain of a tiny vessel sailing a vast, asphalt sea. Maybe it’s my control issues bubbling hotly to the surface because, if only for a scant subset in our lifetime of minutes together, our lives actually are held between two meaty hands lightly perched at ten and two.
Squinting through the bug-streaked windshield, I see first that which stretches out before us and my passengers rely upon me to navigate safely the spreading morass of Death’s opportunity. The slow, heavy droplets of a plodding coastal rain pelt the thin partition between comfort and danger and I know it’s all up to me. I relish this heady sensation far more than I care to admit. I need a perilous many things, but maybe I need to be needed most of all. Or maybe, it’s just the fact that Road Trip Dad operates by his own special rules.
Gone are the normal prohibitions inherent for a life of healthy eating, sleeping, and communication. On the road, there is no kale, no strict bedtime, or talking out our issues. There is only the unweighted certainty of highway hamburgers and singing at the top of our lungs while we stare down a white line snaking through a black night, guiding us to adventure and back. Yet, like the first and cautious buds of spring, Road Trip Dad can’t stay long. He doesn’t pay the mortgage. That’s Monday Dad’s problem. And Monday Dad looks a lot like my own father, the unintentional master of all things paternal.
I say unintentional because I’m pretty sure he never shared my sort of certainty about a future of fatherhood. How could he? He didn’t really have a dad of his own. Learning at the cocked fist of life itself, he admits readily he simply didn’t expect to live long enough. The man made himself wholly from scratch. No, he didn’t exactly slither from a pod or spring fully formed from the forehead of an angry god, but he surely wasn’t afforded the unchecked luxury of proper role models. Not like I was.
However, despite the steely conceit I saw throughout my childhood, I realize today that he was pretty much making it up as he went along. This is to his eternal credit. While he could be painfully short and terrifyingly stern, he was always there. Often, whether we liked it or not. It’s strongly akin to how I strive to be most days, but I like to believe my own brand is just a bit smoother around the edges.
While her love is beyond question, I would prefer it if my own child liked me just a little, as well. This is a condition I was never sure truly interested my father. Only as an adult can I concede that being liked is probably somewhat of a luxury, too. “Like” comes and goes, and Monday Dad can’t allow himself be beholden to such pre-teen poll-taking and still do this job correctly. Yes, I do want to be loved, liked, respected, and more than lightly feared.
Yet, the relative primacy of these stands flexible and, like a mother with many children, I take turns trying to assure each offspring response that they’re my favorite. Rarely do these return routes intersect more haphazardly than when Road Trip Dad takes the wheel, wicked car DJ-ing and gleefully hemorrhaging cash like vacation will never end. All too quickly, though, reality’s inertia ticks down his time while the odometer counts our miles up. Sundays will always become Mondays. Still, until we catch sight of our own driveway, we can all pretend a little longer that Monday Dad doesn’t exist.
