It was the summer time, and boredom had set in long enough. So we got into our pale blue Chevrolet Caprice station wagon and rolled west; California or bust. In the front seat, my grandmother and her sister, Raynete, we called her Pinky. My mother and two sisters were sandwiched in the middle row; my brother and I were relegated to the third row, facing the opposite direction. I remember that summer being particularly humid, the day we left I sweated out of two shirts just packing my things into the car, the leather upholstery seared any piece of skin that it touched if it had been in the sun too long, and the metal seatbelt buckles were prone to burn our hands.
We were headed for the Golden Coast, sun drenched beaches, Rodeo Drive, Hollywood. Actually it was more like, farm country in the San Joaquin Valley; Sacramento was an hour away and the closest beach was twice that far. The western hills of New Jersey softly rose into the slightly larger hills of eastern Pennsylvania; the twilight drenched the sky in a gold drapery, exceedingly covered by the darkening sky. My brother, Josh, and I saw the sunset only in our periphery, the darkness behind us was closing in, and soon we were driving in almost total darkness; the occasional streetlight flooding our eyes for a few fleeting second.
We were almost to Tennessee, 3 days into our trip the first signs of fraying nerves were beginning to show. Grandma and Aunt Pinky were in their own “sister world” often forgetting there were 5 other people in the car with them; turning off the A/C because their toes were cold. My indignation would rise with the temperature; as the sun rose in the east, so did my irritation level with inconsideration, or when I was exceptionally put off, anything that rubbed me the wrong way. My mother and sisters had each other to snip at, adding my grandmother and great aunt for flavor. For the time being, grumbling was kept to a minimum and passive temperament was intact. It would be another day before we reached Texas.
The Dallas suburb where my Aunt Koriene and her husband Tony lived felt like an oasis in a harsh desert wilderness. It was consistently 95 degrees or hotter every day after we crossed the Mason Dixon line, and the first two days we were in Texas the heat was in excess of 110 degrees on successive days. We loafed on plush sofas and rested, driving can be so exhausting for some reason. My cousins Bobby and Sarah-Emily are the closest in age to my brother Josh, sister Hannah and myself, and even though we’d only seen each other a scant few times that anyone could definitively recall, we interacted as though we’d spent years together. We only stayed for 5 days, elbowroom began to get cramped, and California still beckoned. But Texas was a big state and I had another aunt who lived outside of Austin a few hours away whom we were intending to visit. We left our oasis to venture into the desert.
What we found was a glorified trailer, with my Aunt Kristen, her husband Jim, their 7 children and 3 dogs. A prefabricated home community surrounded us, each uniform plot had the domicile and 20x40yd backyard, high cedar fences marked territory lines. To say the living quarters inside the house were tight would be an erroneous understatement. With a total of 4 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms to accommodate 16 people, it felt like being in the middle of bumper-to-bumper traffic in the morning. The cousins were all younger than Josh and myself; Hannah was the same age as the eldest cousin Corrie, but 6 of them were girls and the only boy, Matthew was a toddler. We played outside on the sun scorched earth, scrubby grasses and shrubs littered the lawn; most of our games and activities took place on the pavement. In the cool of the night we’d take walks around the neighborhood, watching the sunset and discussing various things. We always carried a reasonably sized switch or rocks with us as the neighborhood was prone to stray dogs, some of which were know to have bitten people. My Aunt had been pregnant with her 4th child and was bitten on her stomach by a stray dog; she was not seriously hurt and 3 months later the baby was born, with no major complications or birth defects. After a week, tensions had run sufficiently high, but we were leaving, to being the last stretch of the first half of our journey; California was calling
It took almost a day to get to New Mexico, the sign welcoming us seemed lighten our spirits and even though the terrain remained an expansive flat land, glimpses of rust colored rocks beginning to rise in the distance lifted our spirits. New Mexico blended into Arizona, the heat got hotter, and the flat land just got flatter. The Grand Canyon was only 2 hours off our route, but somewhere between Austin and Albuquerque we manifested an agenda with a time frame, and a semi-specific time of arrival, and those two hours were far too precious to see a natural wonder. A sunset in Arizona may be one of the most awe-inspiring sights ever seen; the canvas of expansive desert sky mixed a pallet of pinks, golds, reds, and orange to create a masterpiece that unfolded in front of us. We were quiet as the sun set, admiring the vista introspectively. Josh had fallen asleep, and I could see the navy blue and black overtaking the shining golden rays of light slowly, darkness steeping deeper and deeper over us. The red taillights reflected off sheet metal signs we passed, I could see their shape, but what they said exactly was a mystery and I often wondered what their messages were.
As the last of the light was muffled by the oppressive darkness, I turned around in my seat to get a clearer picture of where we were, to see if I could read any of the signs that I was otherwise unable to read. In the center of a dark highway was a large white sign with red lettering, “California Welcomes You!” The greeting lifted my spirit, I felt revived as if the trials that lay behind us were no longer relevant, that even though we were still hours away from our destination, the path was now clear, the end in sight. I felt closely bonded to my family in those subsequent moments, feeling connected to them for completing our journey, safely, tolerating each other, collaborating, putting aside individual comforts to have a pleasant trip. The valley embraced us; we had finally arrived.
