In a hotel by an airport. It could be any airport or any hotel. Sure the leather paneled walls are kind of neat, the four hundred pillow perhaps a little excessive, the Groove Armada sound track nice, but very 1999. So what's my point? I'm kind of trapped in a multi-year ground hog day. Sure the kids grow up each year, I grow wider and a little smoother on my head but its seems the same old stuff. Again. And again. And again.
I guess that's why driving across America seems to be such a great idea. Hey we are so hip and cool that we can give up our 4,400 sq/ft house that we put our heart and sole into and exchanged it for a 1,700 sq/ft that costs twice as much and built 50+ years ago. Some of this, I feel, can be explained by the simple equation
income needed (aka greed) = 2 x current income x number of cools cars
Given that we have no cools cars, then I need to earn at least twice as much as I currently do. This presents a problem that can only be solved with a great startup, an enormous amount of equity and a very nice little IPO (fingers crossed).
So what's my point? Well a two week journey replaced a six month Airstream voyage to "find ourselves". What this really meant was that after years of parenthood we figured that there must be something else to life. I'm sure all the great parents never let this thought pass through their minds. But I am weak and perhaps at little narcissistic. Is this it? Really, really ask yourself this because if you do and you are honest, the answer is not as always palatable as you think or would like to think.
Thank god the mundaneness of Suburbia will be replaced by something else. Cutting the grass every Sunday just seemed like the same old tread mill that I saw a million times growing up. Mediocrity was one thing I never strived for, but it seemed that this was all the somebody in Suburbia could aspire to. Perhaps this is why some many of us parents live our lives through our children. Basically we are screwed, so our only hope is to image a different life. Typically this is played through the lives of our children. You will see it every Sunday at Little League practice.
What did I learn on this trip? I don't handle family stress that well. I get crabby and very annoyed about everything. Sure, buying and selling a house whilst on the road was not a great plan to start with. Final nail? Moving family in a 6' by 8' space for 14 days. Guess I was not designed to spend that much time in that small a space with family. I have no idea how people with five, six or more siblings ever got past childhood. One time in Newfoundland, some bloke who was running a fish processing plant told me that on his wedding night, it was the first time he had ever spent a night with just one person in bed. Now it was not because
a) he was from Newfoundland
or b) he was extremely kinky
In fact a function of being one of twelve siblings and sharing a room with between 4 and 8 siblings on any given night. It freaked him out. When I grew up I had my own bedroom and it was great. Sharing a single space of the car and hotel room with my family, who incidentally I love to bits, is not was I was acclimated to in my childhood. I blame my parents, as I often do in these circumstances... sheez, they should have got all their children to share the same room... what were they thinking?
We did see some amazing things, those that stick will be the colors of the Painted Desert and the Adobe architecture of 900 year old settlements on top of sandstone mesas. America is just an amazing vista for the eye and it some ways lost upon the people who live here. Growing up in a small island in the middle of a grey Atlantic ocean, where the most colorful thing I saw as a kid was a can of Coke, the pure colors of the sun, sky and land of America always surprises me. Even after living here 10 years. Its like I grew up in Black & White and then came here and all I can now see is glorious Technicolor. I don't think the people here really get what an amazing thing they have. Perhaps the "old country" has the history, but we lack the Cinema-scope vistas of America.
My eyes were opened to the America I had not seen before on this trip. Yes, I have seen the inner city desolation of the poor, the countless and faceless homeless living in a box under the bridge. But on this trip it was the rural poor I saw. They were all essentially Black and had lived like this for generations. They worked for "Big Ag" and essentially were and are kept in their place. They have enough to survive, but nothing to make their lives any better. Rural Mississippi seemed to have only changed from the marches in the 60's by the cars people now drove. Whilst voting is a right that all should have, I somehow felt that 50 years of politics had left these people behind. There was no influence to capture or vote worthy to garner by making their lives better. The Lower 9th Ward reflected in some way the same sentiment. Why go out of your way to garner a vote that you will either never capture or will always be in your pocket. A crime? For sure, but no heads will ever roll.
A million words have already been written about the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. I think after three years that all political parties can claim their own victory or ammunition but at the end of the day its another group of under represented people that have been put to one side by those that are there to represent them. I'm glad that I'm in a position that I can change my circumstances, but appreciate the fact after spending times in other ravished places that I can always get out. I'm not sorry about that, I'm really not. I always saw my role as documenting what I saw and getting the hell out, preferably in one piece. I wish this was different, that I had time to bond with the people and their suffering. But its not like that always when the rubber meets the road. You have a short amount of time to assimilate and interpret. Go try for yourself and see if you feel any different or more importantly behave differently.
As I have written, the food changed as the landscape. The soft rolling hills of Mississippi, Tennessee and Oklahoma had a palate of strong comfort food. The chicken was fried and crispy, the collard greens bitter, the mashed potatoes rich and creamy but most importantly the belly full. The desert states, New Mexico and Arizona led to a fire in the food that matched the heat of the daylight sun. The richness of the deep reds and bright greens of the chillies in the food matched the surrounding landscape. The burn in the mouth matched the burn on the unprotected skin in the daylight heat. And it was good.
In the final reality, I, by my own standard have failed as the father I wanted to be. I'm crabby, distracted and otherwise a cantankerous old sod. I guess, whilst I have respect for my father, it was not the father I promised myself I would be (there goes my inheritance). I thought I would always be so much more engaged, interested and a part of their lives. All those that have been or are on this journey may have that same inkling. Trying to do your best perhaps is not enough but its all you can do. Children are demanding and have that single sense of purpose that as an adult its terribly difficult to achieve because, well for all the other distractions that go on in your day to day. You know, the job, career, mowing the lawn, getting that quart of milk for bedtime etc.
The journey was an eye opener, but the joy was in the journey and not the destination. I will never regret the time and in time the rough edges will rub of to leave the shine of the bright shinny surface underneath. Just in the same way a tarnished surface of a motorcycle crankcase gleams after polishing, the highlights of the time and what we saw will out weigh the small cramped space we shared for 14 days. For the kids, well I suspect that they will remember the stories we weave but not the actual events. In 1974, when I was seven years old, we went to Hungary. It took, I think, three days to get there. I experienced my first continental quilt (i.e. a feather bed) and a continental breakfast (i.e. bread, cheese and meat) and crossed the iron curtain (i.e. a regular border crossing but with guys with lots of guns and funny hats). I have seen the pictures and slides many times and suspect that my memory has been reenforced by this and the countless stories. But if I remove that, I'm left with going on my first tram to the movies. I don't recall what the movie was, but have a sense of men in great coats with guns and the shell splats on the buildings in Budapest. Oh and these funny bread things covered in salt, Pretzels they called them and of course the fired lumps of goodness that is the "langosh".
Whilst I don't think our children will have those memories, they will be left with, I hope, the wanderlust to go build their own memories far beyond the comfort of their homes and their current lives. In effect, to go do all those things we promised ourselves we would do but never got around to.
Here's hoping.
-Alvin / August 2008
