My Daughter Tried To Stop My Six-Week Solo Trailer Trip—Then One Question Made Me Realize What She Was Really Afraid Of
PART 1
I told my children about the trip over pot roast because I had spent fifty-nine years believing bad news and big news both went down better with gravy.
“This is not an idea,” I said before Kate could call it one. “The trailer is booked. The campgrounds are booked. I leave three weeks from tomorrow.”
My daughter stopped cutting her carrots.
My son, Owen, looked at me over his water glass. “How long?”
“Six weeks.”
Kate put down her knife. “Six weeks where?”
“Ohio to Michigan, across the Upper Peninsula, down through Wisconsin, then home through Illinois and Indiana. Nothing farther west than Madison. No mountain passes. No desert. No heroic nonsense.”
“I don’t think heroism was the concern.”
“That sounded like a concern.”
“It sounded like a list of states.”
“It is a list of states.”
Kate looked at Owen as if he might translate me into a language she preferred.
He did not.
Sunday dinner had been at my house almost every week since Jim died four years earlier. Not because I had declared it sacred. It had simply become the easiest place for all of us to keep meeting. Kate lived twelve minutes away with her husband, Eric, and their daughter was in college. Owen lived forty minutes south and came twice a month unless work interfered. I roasted something. Kate brought salad. Owen brought dessert because nobody trusted him with vegetables.
That evening he had brought an apple pie and was now eating the edge of the crust as if our conversation were weather.
Kate leaned toward me. “Mom, you have never towed anything alone.”
“Correct.”
“You have barely towed anything with someone.”
“Also correct.”
“You backed Jim’s boat trailer into a hedge.”
“Once. In 1998. The hedge recovered.”
Owen coughed into his napkin.
Kate did not smile.
I reached for the red thermos beside my chair and poured more coffee. The thermos had traveled through eighteen years of campgrounds with Jim, though he had hated the color and called it my fire hydrant. The lid was scratched. One dent near the bottom came from a picnic table in Tennessee. I used it every Sunday because coffee stayed hot and because I owned things for reasons other than symbolism.
Kate watched me put the lid back on.
“What kind of trailer?” she asked.
“Seventeen feet. Under thirty-five hundred pounds loaded. The Highlander is rated for more than that, and I’m having the hitch and brake controller inspected before I pick it up.”
“You already bought a trailer?”
“No. I put a deposit on a used one at Valley RV. I can walk away after the inspection if it is wrong.”
“When were you going to tell us?”
“I am telling you.”
“Three weeks before you leave.”
“I told Darlene six weeks ago.”
Kate stared at me. “Darlene is not your child.”
“No. She is the woman who has towed a camper by herself for twelve years, which seemed useful.”
Owen finally spoke. “Are you taking a towing class?”
“Tuesday.”
Kate looked at him. “Do not encourage this.”
“I asked a question.”
“You know what I mean.”
I knew what she meant too. She wanted the three of us on the same side of the table, with the trip on the other side where dangerous ideas belonged.
I had expected worry. I had not expected the feeling that I had announced I was joining a circus.
“I have roadside assistance,” I said. “I’m not driving at night. I’ve limited travel days to four hours. I have reservations for the first four weeks and flexible options after that. Darlene and I are doing a two-night shakedown at Cedar Hollow after the class.”
Kate folded her arms. “Why six weeks?”
“Because I want six weeks.”
“Why alone?”
“Because I want to know what it is like.”
“You can know what it is like for a weekend.”
“I could also know what Cleveland is like by standing at the airport.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No. That is my point.”
Her face changed then. The anger thinned, and something more frightened showed through.
“Mom,” she said, “this isn’t like you.”
