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Those were the days when I ran down the stone driveway, past the barn where they kept the younger cows, and past the apple tree out of which my neighbor friend had fallen that summer like a piece of over ripe fruit. His mother had broken off an aloe leaf and rubbed the sappy goo inside of it on to his back while I had stared in wonder at such strange medicine.

A red brick church sat peacefully across the road, its steeple staring down at me with stern eyes. Its parking lot was a mother lode of monkey’s gold, and the door was always locked.

I slowed in the church’s parking lot, staring out over the graveyard where we sometimes played hide and seek when the nights were warm and the fireflies drifted like neon-yellow sparks through the humidity. But on those kinds of hot days, the only thing that moved was the air, shimmering and oppressive and hypnotic.

Then into the shade behind the church. I slipped down the dirt bank to where the creek curved up against the trees. Those were the days of innocence for me – I knew so little about how the world worked, so little about the atrocities or the injustices. The muddy water drifted by.

Sometimes my dad walked down there with me carrying a shovel and two fishing rods. In the shade that washed up next to the creek, he dug the shovel into the wet dirt and the ground made a sucking noise as he flipped it over. The squiggling ends of worms frantically waved like flags of surrender. I plucked one of them and methodically pierced it with the hook, then cast it into the water. The bobber floated like hope.

We waited.

* * * * *

This weekend my own kids will draw pictures for me and give me boxes of candy (usually not my favorites, but the candy they most associate with me, which for some strange reason is the Atomic Fireball). I will hop into the pool with them and chase them around the outside of it the way my dad used to chase me. Or I’ll threaten to throw them in while they’re still in their church clothes, and all of it is learned bahavior.

Then on Monday night I’ll mow my father’s lawn, and I’ll think how strange it is that I enjoy it, especially after all of those years when his command to “Go mow the yard” brought so much angst into my soul. I’ll mow the lines straight, not because he is nagging me to, but because after all of these years I appreciate a lawn with straight lines. I’ll use the catcher, not because he tells me to, but because after all of these years I appreciate a freshly mowed lawn free of grass clippings.

These are the things that rise through the murky water of my mind, three days before Father’s Day.

 

Our entire family is in a strange adjustment period. Cade and Lucy aren’t sure what we mean when we talk about home. Sammy cried on our first night back because he wanted to sleep in the bus. Only Abra seems to bounce around the house as if nothing new is going on.

While there are many fun and adventurous things about living in a big blue bus, here are seven that I don’t miss:

1) Emptying the waste tank every few days. I’m not going to go into detail on this one, but let me say this: it’s rather amazing how much waste a family of six produces.

2) Going to the bathroom anywhere but in the bus. Due to #1, we tried to use other restrooms as much as possible. Restaurants, Walmarts, the bathrooms in the campground that were half a mile away. It’s amazing how far you will walk to use a restroom when you’re the one responsible for emptying the stuff.

3) Worrying about the bus. After getting stuck in a ditch, I felt like I had an ulcer. After losing the brakes, I thought I was having heart palpitations for weeks. It was all I could do not to break out into song the moment I handed the bus keys back to my uncle.

4) Showering in the tiny shower. Get wet. Turn off the water. Lather up. Turn on the water. Rinse. Turn off the water. And all of that done in a rather tiny space. Yeah, I’m enjoying normal showers quite a bit.

5) The occasional feeling of isolation. We went on a long stretch from Pasadena to Mount Rushmore without seeing anyone we knew, and even I, the ultimate introvert, started to crave the sight of another familiar face.

6) The smell of a dirty diaper in such a confined space. Enough said.

7) One on one time with my wife – you can take that however you’d like (the kids were ALWAYS around!).

If you went on a trip, what do you think you would enjoy the most? What would you miss the most about normal life?

Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

– GK Chesterton, Manalive 

There is something about seeing animals in a zoo that saddens me. I know they are, for the most part, treated well. I know that many of the animals in our zoos today are there because there were found injured or orphaned. But walking on that paved path, seeing them lying lazily under fake stones with huge balls to play with while people gawk or laugh or take photos, is such a desperate sight.

Then our big blue bus pulled through Yellowstone.

* * * * *

For the five days we were there, all we wanted to see was a bear in the wild. Preferably a grizzly. Preferably with cubs. And preferably at a safe distance. There’s nothing like a mauling to ruin an otherwise good vacation.

We saw huge, lumbering bison wandering through fertile fields. We saw lone coyotes scamper along the edge of the forest. We saw majestic elk running in herds. But we couldn’t find any bear.

Then, on day three, I decided to drive out to check my email. We had no internet or cell phone access at the campground, and it was about thirty minutes to a high point where I could get online. Maile and the kids decided to stay behind, and I took off in the minivan. You see what’s coming right?

Along a particularly beautiful stretch, cars lined the road – this usually means there’s something cool to see, so I slowed down and parked along the edge. Then I saw them: a grizzly bear and two cubs galloped down a nearby hill, towards the road. Everyone outside of their cars suddenly scrambled for cover as the bears sprinted across the road, between the single-file line of parked cars, through the adjoining meadow, and into the river. All three of them swam through the icy water, their heads bobbing along.

They were wild and untamed and unpredictable. There was something hugely appealing to this thought, that they lived life on their own terms, without protection from mother nature or other animals. They foraged for their own food. They bred and bore cubs and hibernated, and the life they lived was their own.

They were assured of little, but they were also imprisoned by no one.

* * * * *

Do not settle down. Do not allow yourself to be led into some “dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas.” Do not allow yourself to be tamed by your parents or your peers or your pastor. They mean well. They want things for you, things they think are good, things like safety and comfort and predictability.

Free yourself. Live the wild adventure that God has prepared for you. Run through the fields. Swim the icy river. Be who you were created to be – it’s the only way to stay sane in a world gone mad.

We sat out on a covered balcony on Sunday evening. It was around 5pm, one of those summer evenings that was hot but could have been hotter. In the shade it felt nice: a sit-outside-and-drink-iced-tea kind of evening fading into night. Fading into night.

I sat as close as I could to my grandmother, all 82 pounds of her. So light, 82 pounds – the weight of a growing child. She seemed so small in the wheelchair, like a little one sitting in her daddy’s office chair. Her feet were clad in teal blue slippers with those non-slip bumps all around them, but the rest of her clothes were the clothes she had always worn: a plain skirt with a button-up sweater over some sort of blouse.

“Someone needs to water my flowers,” she said quietly, motioning towards the dying plant on the patio table, the plants that are not hers to water. “I would do it, but I’m just so tired.”

I leaned in closer, and she dropped her ear towards me, happy to receive.

“We came back early to see you,” I whisper-shouted into her ear.

“That’s okay,” she said, her weak voice coming out in a mumbling stream. “You can see me for a while yet.”

* * * * *

My dad feeds her ice cream. It is hard to speak to her, when my throat is one of those miserable lumps and my eyes keep welling up, so I let her squeeze my hand and I feel her fragile skin. She used to treat my hand when I was a sick child and she’d rub the bones so hard I eventually pulled them away with a yelp. But the power in her hands is gone, and I find myself wishing for the pain.

My voice still doesn’t want to work so I hold a cup of water up to her mouth and she drinks it like a bird. Then I move Chap-stick over her dry lips. I finally manage to speak, ask her if she would like something to eat. Some soup? Some applesauce? Some coffee? I try the coffee as a testament to its goodness. It’s sweet, I tell her, just as she always liked it.

She leans towards me.

“I don’t drink coffee anymore – they put my pills in it.”

I look questioningly at the mug. My dad laughs.

* * * * *

My dad talks to her in Pennsylvania Dutch, and she responds in brighter tones, as if something buried was coming alive. He asks her about her recent dreams, and she responds. I do not know this language. It is a strange combination of foreign and familiar to me.

Later my dad tells me what she said, that she has been dreaming a lot about her parents.

“I just get so tired of missing them,” she had said wistfully.

* * * * *

My dad had told me of their previous visit, how she took a small part of her skirt and folded it and moved it and folded it, over and over again. Finally my mom realized what she was doing: grandma was binding a quilt. She had done that practically her whole life, and in these days when her mind seems absent a fair amount of the time, it’s almost like her body goes back to what it remembers. So my mom handed her a piece of fabric, and she folded it and creased it and smoothed it, refolded it and creased it and smoothed it again. And again.

Her hands moved in a slow rhythm of life – there were years of history in those movements. She was a small girl, learning to quilt. She was a newly-wed, quilting for extra money. She was a new mom, a baby on the floor beside her. She was in her middle age, quilting for her business. She was a recent widow, quilting through her grief.

In that moment of imaginary quilting, she was not 92: she was 9 and 18 and 23 and 45 and 60. She was an entire life.

Perhaps this is why it is so important that we do not overlook the older ones among us: they are the embodiment of an entire life, and every age they have ever been is there for us to see, for us to bear witness to. They are years within years within years, layers of wisdom and experience, heartache and hope, death and life.

The veins and wrinkled skin and whispered memories form a topography, a stunning landscape, a map by which we who are so lost can hope to find our way.

I walked out of the bus after backing it into my parents’ driveway. Everyone else had already gone inside. Earlier that week, my dad had painted a message on a huge blue tarp and stretched it over the garage door:

“Welcome Home Willie and Kids. Love Ya.”

Across the street from my parents’ house, an Amish man slowly drove his horses through the field, gathering the loose hay into long piles. The machine made a soft clacking sound. The Amish man was expressionless, guiding the horses with small movements of the reigns – the most indiscernible motions completely changing their course.

* * * * *

It is difficult to know what to think right now. There are many strange paths the mind takes after finally returning home after a great adventure.

The last four months almost seem as if they never happened. Everything here seems exactly the same as when we left – the people, the places, the pace of life. It’s a strange thing, the way life continues on when you’re not around. Perhaps this is disconcerting because it reminds me that, when I die, this world will keep spinning.

But there is also the “what next?” element to think about. Now that we’ve done what we always wanted to do, what next? How do we move forward from here? How do we top this? How can we regroup?

* * * * *

Walking down into my parents’ basement gave me a very strange feeling. If you’ve read “Building a Life Out of Words,” then you know that we moved into this basement after ending up over $50,000 in debt. We moved in here, in late 2009, to get a fresh start.

And now we’re back. That can be a little disorienting. How did we end up back here again? Where do we go from here?

Then, as I walked into the basement bathroom, I saw a piece of paper glued to the mirror. It was something I had printed out and put up there almost three years ago, just after we had moved in. Just after my business had gone down the tubes. Just after I had decided to write for a living. This is what the paper said:

Patient endurance is what you need now, so you will continue to do God’s will – then you will receive all that He has promised. Hebrews 10:36

A message from my past, something that I had typed in 2009, speaking into my present.

Patient endurance.

That is what I need now.

Do not trouble your hearts overmuch with thought of the road tonight. Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them. (From Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings)

It’s Thursday afternoon as I write this, and it’s quiet and it’s hot. A few flies buzz around the door where the sun reaches in and scorches the bus’s black leather passenger seat. Maile and the kids fled to a small lakeside beach not far from where we are parked. Through the vents I can hear the A/C rush and roar but it cannot catch up.

The bus is messy, as it usually is at this time in the afternoon. An empty cereal box stands at leaning attention. A sippy cup, a styrofoam cup, a random shoe, a plastic deer, and a John Deere tractor clutter the floor under the table. The couch I’m sitting on holds a box of Legos, two of the kids’ backpacks, Maile’s purse, and a pile of homeschooling folders.

But soon it will all be over. By Saturday night we hope to have this bus parked in my parents’ driveway, and by Monday it will be cleaned out. We will probably never spend a night in it again. How strange.

Two weeks ago we were parked in a beautiful campground in South Dakota, wearing sweaters and coats. One month ago, Salinas, California, and we hadn’t yet lost our brakes. Five or six weeks ago, we were in windy Amarillo, a visit that seems to have taken place years in the past. Tulsa, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Sarasota, Gainesville, Orlando, Charlotte, Bremo Bluff – all seem like settings in a book I read, long ago.

Four months ago (or one week before we left on our trip), I could not have begun to envision the amazing people we were about to meet in person, or the awesomeness of the landscape, or the heart-in-mouth moments of stress, anger and fear. We’ve experienced things I never could have imagined.

* * * * *

This is an adventure: setting out to do something that doesn’t make sense, something for which you are not completely equipped, something that takes you into a place fraught with danger or uncertainty. This is true of changing professions or moving or writing a book. It is true of saying hello to a stranger or giving away money for which you had a very good use. There are many ways to embark on an adventure, and very few of them involve a big blue bus named Willie.

Also, this about adventures: there are many terrible things that can happen along the way, and many terrible things that WILL happen along the way, but the worst thing that could possibly happen is that you return unchanged.

* * * * *

We return from our adventure with very little to show for it – at least in a material sense. We have a good deal less money, not much work lined up, and for at least a few weeks we will be living with our parents. Again. By most measures used by this world, taking this trip was a mistake, and it has left us worse off than when we began.

Thankfully, there are other means with which to measure a life. Ones less arbitrary than the numbers on a bank statement.

I know my wife better than I did before. I now understand why she wanted to take the trip, something I didn’t know before we left. I have a better understanding of what she needs from me, and I understand (at least a little more) how I can provide her with that. I now see that she does put her right hand up over her chest while she reads something that moves her.

I’ve learned how much my children need me to be present for them. What a soft heart Cade has. Lucy’s yearning for affection. Abra’s enjoyment of a messy, crazy, moving life. How, when Sam watches the landscape go by, it tames his savage side. His “Red Rackham” side.

I’ve changed, too, but in less tangible ways, ways that I have trouble articulating. At least right now. Give me a few days. I’ll let you know.

* * * * *

It has been quite an adventure. I wish you knew how much I appreciated the fact that you took the time to join us, to read our posts, to comment, to encourage. The countless emails that I received from people who were inspired by our trip in turn inspired us to keep going. We didn’t always want to keep going. But we did.

So for now I say good-bye from the road. The next time we meet, I’ll be in my parent’s basement again. Full circle. Looking for writing work. Going to visit grandma. Taking my aunt for her chemo treatments, if she’ll have me. That’s another thing I’ve learned on this trip: I can have little adventures every day, if I’ll just get outside of myself for a minute.

In the words of JRR Tolkien, who penned perhaps the greatest adventure story ever written:

Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.

Finally, this:

Take an adventure. I can see it in your eyes. You could use one.

* * * * *

Photograph used with permission. Copyright Michelle Walls.