Day 1. 12 p.m. Mom and I blast off from the Chicago suburbs in an ancient Jeep Cherokee which at time of purchase unnamed decades ago seemed gigantic, but in 2012 feels like a clown car, or even a cereal box prize, if you don’t think that’s too hyperbolic. It predates airbags, but the air conditioning works, which is important when you’re crossing Iowa in July. The dashboard clock went on strike after my father died, as if to say it would heed no other master, so we just add three hours and thirteen minutes to whatever time we see, and, as Mrs. Glass-Half-Full points out, we don’t need to fuss with it when crossing time zones. We are expert at devising workarounds. Yes, there are more things in the realm of domestic engineering that are stubborn, idiosyncratic and march to their own drummer than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Virginia, and we’re not just talking electrical appliances here. With 224 child-years in the field, Mom and I have honed that technique of constant, invisible recalibration so necessary to keeping a household humming like a top, not to mention to retaining sanity as a mother. 224 years? Well, that’s 66 for me and 158 for her…that’s right, I didn’t stop counting at the age of majority. To your mother you’re ALWAYS a child. Or almost always a child. Or a child who happens to have a driver’s license, if you’re 86 and want some company along on the annual trip to the Rockies that you (stubborn, idiosyncratic, marching to your own drummer) have been satisfactorily driving alone for more than two decades.

3 p.m. We depart the interstate before crossing the Mississippi, dropping south along a small scenic highway and skirting the river for twenty miles to I-74 and the Bridge That My Mother Likes Better. Once in Bettendorf (Iowa) we pop back up to I-80. After a lively discussion of the shifting banks of the river as recounted in Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi,” and then, for some reason I can no longer recall, of the origin and development of the rumble strip, we realize we need gas and telephone my brother, who has recently discovered some sort of national cheap-gas-website and has taken us on as a project (people tend to do that). We are steered to the cheapest place without going Too Far Off The Road, historically a cardinal sin in my family, although you may have just noticed Mrs. Tiggywinkle makes occasional exceptions according to some ill-defined, unarticulated aesthetic criterion whose roots she will not divulge.  What was that I was saying about stubborn and idiosyncratic?

I pull up to the pumps behind a pickup with Iowa plates that reads IM4CORN. “A commentary on the Ethanol boondoggle?” I muse.

“Mmm.” Marjorie is noncommittal. She hands me her credit card and pulls Chekhov’s “Ward Six and Other Stories” out of the glove compartment. At the bottom of the page she looks up. “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy,” she says. In other words: You’re not in Oregon anymore. You have to get out and pump your own gas. I get out and pump my own gas.

4 p.m. Intriguing kind-of-homemade-looking billboards for the Real Danish Windmill begin to proliferate, but Mrs. Sowerberry refuses to let me stop because it is Too Far Off the Road. We sail past the exit. Four hours in. For the first time I begin to wonder exactly HOW LONG it will ACTUALLY BE that we will be CLOSETED TOGETHER in this MINIATURE EXCUSE FOR A SPORT UTILITY VEHICLE before reaching Denver. As if on cue, a really cool late model green Alfa Romeo passes us, so swiftly I cannot see the driver. I imagine a tall dark handsome stranger in the driver’s seat and gaze after it longingly as it disappears into the western horizon.  Shortly afterward, opportunity for retaliation appears in the form of a Dairy Queen icon on an exit sign. I maneuver a bathroom stop, innocently suggest Tastee Freezes, and then use her wallet.

6 p.m. We discover that a Macaroni Grill has popped up near her customary first-night motel. While we draw with crayons on the white paper tablecloth, Mom tells the story of walking into this self-same motel one year and being absolutely bowled over by a breathless woman crying ARE YOU INGABORD? “Your father could NOT stop laughing. There was some sort of reunion going on and this woman just would not take no for an answer. She was absolutely convinced I was Ingabord. I don’t know how we escaped.  ‘We all have a twin out there somewhere,’ Dad said, ‘and yours is apparently an Ingabord who lives in Des Moines.’”

It all clicks into place. At some point during my college years, Dad started doing this thing where he’d call my mom Ingabord and then they’d keel over laughing, but in that typical careless selfish pigheaded way of parents of adult children who’d already long ago written them off, NEVER EXPLAINED. They were a barrel of monkeys in general, so we had no idea there was a backstory to this particular contrivance. I tuck it away to tell my sibs.

The waitress arrives with our meal. Forty years ago, even on the divided highways, you’d be dining at mom-and-pop establishments, not national chains, the kind of restaurants with menus printed on the paper placemats. I tuck into a splendid plate of mushroom ravioli. “Road-tripping ain’t what it used to be,” I say, and Ingabord, holding up a crayon, nods agreement.

DAY 2

8 a.m. Breakfast at a Mickey D’s packed with retired farmers nursing styrofoam cups of coffee. “Kind of sad,” Mom says. “McDonald’s drove all the local cafes out of business and now these guys have to come all the way out to the highway and sit here in these stupid plastic chairs. Nowhere else to go.”

I’m not paying attention. “Mom!” I shriek, reading the fine print, as I am wont to do. “This sausage biscuit with egg has FIVE HUNDRED AND TEN calories!”

“Why did you order it then?” she asks, demurely lifting a spoonful of breakfast parfait, which I said was almost an oxymoron, and she said no it wasn’t (an oxymoron), and I said well I did say almost, and she said yes, she knew what I meant, it wasn’t an oxymoron but Ogden Nash could definitely have had fun with it. Exactly, I say, popping the last bite in my mouth and wiping my greasy fingers on a paper napkin.

A retired farmer detours past us to lean over Marjorie. “Don’t believe a word she says,” he grins conspiratorially.

“She figured that one out a long time ago,” I fire back.

“Now–which one of you is the older sister?” he flirts, then bowls away to rejoin his friends. My mother, though smiling, had given me no aid, and after he leaves says only: “You never told me why you ordered that biscuit.”

In the restroom I stand at the deafening electric hand dryer and watch my mother at the sink. After washing her hands, she gives them a practiced shake, then lightly pats her head—backs first, then palms. She catches sight of me in the mirror as my tiny smile blooms into a grin. “I’m drying my hands on my hair!” she protests, defiantly finishing her restyle with damp fingertips.  “I always do that. Those dryers are so noisy.” She shoulders her purse and comes to stand beside me at the door. “Reduce reuse recycle,” she says brightly, as she waits for me to open it.

11 a.m. After the certified TWO LONGEST HOURS of driving contained within the continental US as documented in the pages of the most recent edition of the Rand-McNally Road Atlas, we hit Council Bluffs, cross the wide Missouri, and are in Nebraska. West of Lincoln, just past the first silo vertically adorned Jesus Is Risen, we depart the interstate for parallel Route 6, since Mrs. Sustainability favors the roads less traveled. I scrabble in my purse for a pen.

“Don’t do that,” she scolds, “We’re on a two-lane road now.”

“But I need a pen.”

She does the brow-crinkle thing.

“Really! I need a pen. I’m going to start a decorative antique farm implement count.”

“Let me do that for you.” She takes my bag. “Why are there so many plastic army men in your purse?”

“Long story. Can you find a pen?” Note that it did not faze her at all to find two dozen tiny plastic army men in my purse. She was only curious as to why I had so many. This is why I love her.

She takes my yellow legal pad and flips to a clean sheet. “We’ll call it ‘Rusted Farm Implements,’ ” she decides, holding it up to show me. “That’s shorter.”

“Good look,” I respond. Each time we slow to go through a town, I count aloud, she double-checks, then marks them down in Roman numerals.

“I’m counting it double if it has an American flag stuck in it,” says Mrs. Miniver, as we accelerate back up (35…45….55)  from the stop sign that marks the center of each town.

“Do you think it’s because of the Fourth of July, or are they there all year ‘round?”

“All year ‘round,” she says, which is what I think too.

The Fourth of July brings Richard Ford’s “Independence Day” trilogy to mind, and we discuss why some “guy books” have universal appeal, and some don’t.  My mother asserts that nobody, whether male or female, reads Ernest Hemingway after the age of twenty, or maybe twenty-two, and we’re really just talking literary quality here, and then we wonder if people read Dos Passos’s “USA Trilogy” anymore and if not why not, and if so should they be doing so, and I say yes if only for historical reasons, and she says you mean stream-of-consciousness not necessarily World War I, and I say yes of course, and she says I thought that’s what you meant.

Waving fields of grain crowd the road on both sides, barely held in check by fences so close that if you didn’t know better you’d think space was at a premium, but of course it’s not out here, it’s just that the old roads have no shoulders. We approach another town. The first sign appears at 45 mph (a rickety wooden scaffolding with fraternal order emblems affixed), at 35 a peppering begins: Dusty Farmer Motel, Frontier Ammo & Gift Shop, Chappy’s Auto Works, finally winding down (or leading up, as the case may be) to Hastings, pop.450.  As I glide up to the center-of-town four-way stop, Mrs. Poetry-in-Motion pulls out a nifty thermos and pours herself a finger of coffee without spilling a drop.

“Hey, that’s cool!” I admire it and she holds it up: a slender ten-ounce thermos emblazoned with the logo of a major regional, or is it minor national, coffee chain, which she procured for its fitness for a particular purpose, i.e. keeping hot the exact amount of leftover coffee she walks out of MacDonald’s with every morning on her annual road trip. “Did you get that at the Elk Coffee back home?”

“Nooo, they had to close that store. They got hounded out of Glencoe for making high-profile anti-Israeli remarks…how stupid can you get? Good riddance!”

1 p.m. We intersect with 281, directly north of Red Cloud and the Willa Cather State Historical Site by about an hour, but I already know that’s too far for a detour and mentally put it on the list for next time. We tune into to the Kansas Farm and Ranch Radio Network and listen to the ag report (sunflowers down 15, canola up 7). Mrs. America, tapping her lip with a finger, searches the landscape. “How green is our valley.”

“The Grass is Singing,” I fire back.

Suddenly Barry Manilow comes on singing “Copacabana” and we look at each other aghast. I beat her to the off button.

“What was it like to take the boat to Europe?” I ask, and this time get the story of her very first transatlantic voyage, one I haven’t heard before, from a couple years after college while she was between jobs. She went over third class with a group of girlfriends but stayed on to spend some time in Paris with her best friend who’d married a French doctor.

“After a couple months the Korean War broke out and my father cabled me to come home, so I walked down to the Cunard office and booked passage. I was on my own and the boat was practically deserted so they moved me into second class, which was much nicer. I spent a lot of time with the purser.” She smiles in recollection. “I thought he was so much older but he was probably all of thirty. He really took me under his wing…he was British, nice young man, married, just had a baby I remember. The captain apparently had quite a reputation….he liked to invite lady passengers back to his quarters for a drink after dinner. Well, when he got around to me the purser found out about it and he said, ‘I’ll come along with you,’ and he did, and everything was fine. He really looked out for me.” She smiles out the window and then opens her book.

3 p.m. Holdrege, NE. I need a nap so I pull over. Mom stows away the tiny Chekhov with the remark: “This is my glove compartment book,” and takes the wheel. I doze off for awhile.

My nap ends suddenly and for no reason; I am still dreaming of the ocean, of a boat, the waves, my mother, when my eyes fly open. My head is canted toward the window. The car is silent. Beneath half-closed lids I watch a fence line jag along, then suddenly dip low, dip up; it had been a dry break tumbled with willows, one sliced dead in half by lightning, and inner tubes had been hanging on the barbed wire fence corners. As the scenery keeps flashing by, I slowly emerge from the cocoon of unexpected midday slumber and realize I am no longer looking but watching, I am watching for signs, but none appear to tell me where I am, so I turn my head to Mother. Her eyes are on the road but across the surface of her face I see the ripple of acknowledgement that I’m awake. Signalling carefully, she arcs around a ’73 Cutlass Supreme just as a homemade billboard appears out of the blue, in the middle of nowhere: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Then, in swift succession, we cross three creeks, mostly dry, probably Spring feeders into the Republican, but dignified with names: Crooked, Lost, and, yes, Spring. “I can drive again now,” I say. I’m awake, re-anchored. And anyways, a little nervous about her passing on a two-lane road.

5 p.m. Marjorie’s second-night motel is a decommissioned Best Western on the main drag. We’d made the reservation the previous evening by phone, in this fashion:

Old Mother Sr.: “Is this the motel that used to be a Best Western? Okay good. You’re the one I want.”

Today, of course, we could not recall the name, which would not have happened had we had a young child traveling with us, or a high schooler, or…well, okay…anyone up to age thirty (if they hadn’t had a baby yet), but we were out of luck, it was just us old folks, so we couldn’t remember.

“No biggie,” says Mrs. Rand-McNally. “How hard can it be? It’s right on the main drag. I’ll find it.” So I keep driving until she shrieks, “Turn here, turn here, turn here!” just like a young child, or maybe a high-schooler, or even someone over thirty who has a baby who needs a diaper change, but it is here that I recall that Mrs. Easy Rider, with her gift for perfect timing, waited loooong after her children were potty-trained before embarking on cross-country road trips with them. Unlike me.

The parking lot of this Used-To-Be-A-Best-Western is full of construction vehicles. “Good thing we made a reservation,” I remark. “Must be a big project going on around here.”

“Oh dear,” she exclaims, inexplicably.  She does a lot of exclaiming, inexplicably, which I usually figure out up to about, oh…say, thirty years later, but these days I’m kinda hoping for earlier turnaround times. Just sayin’. I let her out to check in, then park the car and bring in the bags, as is our drill. The lobby positively reeks of chlorine, courtesy of a swimming pool which fills half of the industrial -green atrium. The other half contains a pool table and a breakfast buffet set-up which fails to inspire confidence. I put the bags down and look around. It all seems vaguely familiar. Mom approaches, dangling the key on a burnt-gold plastic oval, and points up to the interior balcony. “That’s the room we stayed in in 1972. Remember?”

“Um…”

She gives me a wry look. “Guess you didn’t take a note on that.”

We drop the bags and depart again in search of food, but poke around a little, first, because that’s what we like to do.  The old four-square business district, built on a hill above the river valley, has some gems: limestone bank, Masonic hall, movie theater, empty for lease and intact down to the prized vertical marquee. Just beyond the stores, tall trees, sidewalks and houses abruptly begin. The very first, on the crest of the hill, a Wrightian Prairie-style mansion in pristine original condition, complete right down to detached garage, landscape architecture and garden walls. We circle the block, even go through the alley, to admire.

The up and down streets are cement-paved; the shorter, east-west ones we cross are still brick. Each time, at the foot of the hill, we intersect with the ferociously renovated main drag, widened within an inch of its life, gloriously repaved and  bristling with street signals so outsized I fervently hope they’re up to seismic code; they’d pulverize the gently-eroding storefronts around which they jealously guard traffic. Not that it’s necessary, because people in McCook are so kind they can’t wait to give you the right of way, nodding and grinning from the other side of the intersection, vigorously flapping their arms so you can see.

We find two restaurants near the railroad tracks. “Let’s go to the one with the most cars parked outside,” Mme. Michelin suggests.  We stand inside the entrance to let our eyes adjust. The place is big as a dance hall, maybe even was one once. All the action appears to be at the bar; we can hear the noise through the connecting door and the waitresses seem to be pretty busy going back and forth. Other than a group of a dozen at a long table running right down the middle of the room, there’s a whole lot of real estate to choose from. Mom picks a table near the window.

“They have wine on the menu for $2.50,” I point out in surprise.

“No way,” she says. “We’ll have to try it.”

We place our order and then speculate about the other party. Unrelated adults, both sexes, semi-wide age range; napkins on the table, chairs pushed back, legs crossed, nobody in a hurry to leave. We dismiss AA and Rotary and settle on Chamber of Commerce. The waitress returns with a huge goblet and places it in front of Mom. It’s filled to the brim. We stare. “I think we’ll need two straws,” I blurt, and the waitress whips them out of her apron pocket with a grin, not because she thought we were joking but because she is a resident of McCook and very good-natured (see, traffic etiquette, above). After she leaves, with one accord we take the straws, stand them on end, crunch down the paper wrappers into tiny accordions, and then, using the straws as pipettes, siphon water out of the red pebbled water glasses to make expanding snakes, a la 1972.

I pull back into our parking space at the motel after a reasonably successful meal (I’d gotten excited about seeing Cobb salad on the menu, but the avocado was hard as a rock; Ingabord did much better with her Swiss Steak).  A modified tailgater is underway–three construction workers, one front bumper, one six pack–and since we have to walk right past them I say hello. When we get back in the room Mom reminds me to lock the door and then tells me I’m too friendly. I start to laugh, then she says “I mean it,  I’m not kidding,” so I shut up. This is one aspect of the generation gap I will never be able to bridge. After the Cunard story, though, I finally understand (remember what I said about thirty years?): for my mother, the world is full of Men Who Are Trying To Pick You Up, and she has done and continues to do her best to impart this wisdom to her daughters. Like Mrs. Ramsey, she is a beacon from a different age, but a beacon nonetheless, shining on for those who might take notice, and/or take notes.

When I emerge from a very short shower (no hot water), Marjorie has discovered she left her nightgown behind at last night’s motel. “It was the nice one, the one I got in Ireland,” she laments.

“I’ll have to put you through the spanking machine for that,” I chide, rummaging through her purse for the receipt so I can phone last night’s desk clerk….to whom I was friendly and said hello…with whom I chatted….whose name I even remember…..and WHO THEREFORE REMEMBERS ME EXACTLY when I call, is eager to help, and reports success quicker than you can say jack rabbit. Of course this is lost on Marjorie, who is rummaging in her bag.

“I’ll have to wear my alternate.” She pulls out a white shift with a ruffled v-neck, which I have to admit possesses a certain preppy elan. “It used to be a dress,” she says, indicating the row of buttons down the front. Why am I not surprised? Exactly what I’d expect from Mrs. Sustainability of 2012.  As for me, it’s usually boxers and a tank top, but because I knew I’d be sleeping in air conditioning I’ve brought along my winter set, a long-sleeve crewneck three sizes too big over baggy sweatpants printed with a long-faded novelty Christmas pattern. The father of my children used to call this the birth-control suit but that doesn’t appear to have been one hundred per cent successful.

Having negotiated for return by mail of the Irish linen nightgown with the cheerful Iowa desk clerk, I relax with the television while Marjorie settles down to a John Updike novel, “Memories of the Ford Administration.” After about 430 channels of nothing I turn it and open up the atlas. I always bring it into the room. I’m a big one for taking stock. I fumble for my reading glasses, which I HATE, because I need them for maps now, which I also HATE.

“Where are we again?” I ask.

“Nebraska.” She is buried in her book.

“Where the hell ARE we in Nebraska?”

The untrained eye would not have been able to see her silent laughter, but this is one woman about whom I can truly say I’ve known her all my life. 

“Is that as specific as you can get?” I persist.

She lowers the book and pronounces: “That’s all you need to know.”

I pretend to let that slide, then sing back: “And who was it that handled the delicate negotiations for the return by mail of your genuine Irish linen nightgown?”

She sighs. “McCook. We’re in McCook.”

“THANK you,” I return, dramatically readjusting my glasses and fussing with the atlas.

After a moment of silence, from behind the book: “Ben Nelson is from McCook.”

“Who’s Ben Nelson?”

Again from behind, patiently: “Ben Nelson is a big deal around here. Senator. He was a two-term governor and now he’s in the Senate. Ben Nelson is famous. He’s from here.” She lowers the book to intone: “And now, having been to McCook, you can see to what heights he has risen from his humble beginnings.”  Then disappears again.

“Cool cover,” I throw out. It’s one of the early hardcover editions, with a collage portrait, half an oil painting of John Adams, half a black and white photo of Ford. “Kind of Warhol. But not Warhol. If you know what I mean.”

She flips it around and back to look, without comment. There is another momentary silence, broken only by a page turn. Then: “Sweetie, if you need a book, look in my bag. I’ve got a Sue Miller in there…Isabel Allende…”Snow Falling on Cedars”…an Iris Murdoch…Kate Atkinson…mmm…also maybe a Faulkner.”

Just like Marjorie. Articles of clothing can be strewn with abandon all across the continental United States, but as far as reading material goes, it’s strictly No Book Left Behind.

Day 3

9 a.m. Before leaving Nebraska we, I mean I, take a wrong turn between McDonald and St. Francis, but we figure it out pretty quick (St. Francis: As Good As It Gets–Marjorie draws my attention to that jawdropper with “Don’t say you haven’t been warned”). We have to retrace our steps a little, but thanks to the township, range and section system this is not a big problem (folks from the east and west coasts may need to have it explained here that most roads in the Great Wide Open are absolutely rectilinear, except if they’re following, for example, a river, or an old Indian trail.) So we turn around and head straight north. Nearing the intersection we pass a little sign: Last Indian Raid 4 blocks east 1 block south. (Marjorie: “Good to know.”)

As we re-approach the junction and slow for the stop, there is not a vehicle in sight for miles, and believe me we can see for miles. Beneath the stop sign hangs another one announcing: 36 DOES NOT STOP.  Mom leans forward ever-so-slightly. She looks right, left, settles back, waits half a beat, then deadpans:“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about there.” I finally crack up. Elegant, plus  a master of timing—we can only aspire.

11 a.m. Colorado. Colorado is a state with a split personality–right down the middle, to be exact, and all the fun is in the western half. Yes, there’s a reason NO ONE LIVES IN EASTERN COLORADO except a few hardy souls growing melons and lettuce: THERE’S NOTHING THERE. It’s not that it’s more mind-numbing than Iowa. It’s just that it comes after Iowa. And Nebraska. And Kansas. In the olden days, nearing the end of that long, stiflingly hot journey, we’d be draped over our parents’ shoulders, annoying the heck out of them, dinging on about when were we going to see the mountains, fighting to catch the first glimpse. That third day always seemed like the longest. (And  p.s. remember bench seats? freedom of movement in the car? parents who had infinite supplies of patience? And p.p.s. why can’t I be like that now myself?!)

This time around, the third day seems like the shortest. Now that I think about it, every time lately I’m with my mom, the last day seems the shortest.

We whizz through an intersection with a small two-lane in southern Yuma County (again, 36 DOES NOT STOP} marked by two burned-out buildings in charred fields. Belatedly the sign registers. “My gosh was that a town? That was the town.”

“Not any more.” Mrs. Starbuck pours her piping hot additional finger of coffee from her thermos, slides it back into the armrest, and reaches for the road atlas. “Doesn’t look like there was much to it in the first place.” Five minutes later: “There it is! Look!” she crows, holding it up with an index finger somewhere in the bottom right quadrant, as if I could even actually ever read that from twenty-four inches away much less while keeping the car on the road. “I just found it. Punkin Center. Remember Punkin Center?”

I actually don’t, but this time I lie in self-defense. “Um…ringing a bell…”

“That was the year we went down through Kansas City and took 70 all the way across…” She’s tracing the route on the map. “It was the summer your brother got his braces off so it was right before your senior year…Dad wanted to get off the interstate…we took 40 over the state line…went through Arapahoe and Cheyenne Wells…branched off onto 94….we were absolutely starving…it was hotter than Hades…. a highway intersection with a single building…that was Punkin Center.”

I begin to remember: a cafe with a front porch and a screen door, and a fourteen-year-old waitress who looked almost scared to see us, although in retrospect that might have been because my father was wearing a button-down shirt and a necktie. “All they had to drink was orange soda,” I remember. My sister and I got to split Little Brother’s orange soda, because he would only drink Coke. My sister was wearing a seersucker shirt. There were no menus. We were the only ones there.

“There were three choices,” Mom goes on, “Hamburgers, grilled cheese or tuna sandwiches. You ordered a tuna sandwich, and it was just bread with the canned tuna on it, nothing else. Oh, Helen, you were fit to be tied. We thought you were going to do a Jack Nicholson.”

Marjorie Morningstar  has just revealed hitherto unknown depths. Who would have thought they had seen “Five Easy Pieces?” I mean–when it came out?

“I do not remember this. I must have blocked it out.”

“Well, see?” She tapped the notebook in which she, from time to time, had graciously been taking dictation. “Now we know why you need to take so many notes.”

Touche.

1 p.m. I pull up to the departure curb at Denver International, the airport I love to hate, and I know I am not alone in this. Yes, Stapleton was kind of in the middle of a residential neighborhood, yes, that’s a bit of a problem–but talk about over-correction! DIA is practically in WYOMING. And could we make it more gargantuan please? It is just not gargantuan enough. Let’s make those shuttle rides between gates forty minutes, not thirty.

But I digress. Luckily I am not making any connections today; my flight back to Portlandia is non-stop. And I have plenty of time–we’ve dropped me off six hours early. We did that on purpose. Old Mother Sr. will drive the last leg on her own, and we (me and my sister, who has by now arrived at the mountain cabin from southwestern regions after her own road trip with her two little ones) wanted to make sure she would complete it in daylight.  Six hours? I don’t mind; when you have a houseful of kids, a stretch of solitude like that is positively luxurious.

On the other hand…all of a sudden…I don’t want this road trip to end.

But I have to get out of the car.

I put both hands on the dashboard. “Men, my work here is done.”

“Tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it,” she jokes back.

I retrieve my small bag from the back of the car and walk around to the driver’s window.

“So.” I pull up the handle on my bag, retract it, pull it up, retract it again. “You’re okay to finish the voyage out by yourself.”

“YES.” She puts her hand on mine. “Stop that now. Look–you just set a record.”

“What record?”

She points at the dashboard clock. “Three hours and seventeen minutes. Between literary allusions.”

“Suck it up, Ma! You’ve been cursed with Highly Literate Progeny.” I lean in to kiss her. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Well–your father had something to do with it too.” She looks at me, amused. “But I guess I’m left holding the bag!” She gives me a smack and then flaps at hand at me, like the good people of McCook. “Now get in there. I have to boogie. Need to get to My Side of The Mountain before dark or your sister will have a fit.”

So I kiss her again, radio in to the receiving sibling that the package is on the way, and wheel my little suitcase into the giant steel-and-glass circus tent of Denver International in search of a tuna salad sandwich.

I find one easily–on a croissant!–and then stop at the counter of a major regional, or is it minor national, coffee chain, for a cup of java to go along. I take the receipt, and instead of doing the usual crumple-and-toss, I catch myself carefully folding and stowing it in a zippered compartment of my wallet.

After a moment I figure it out. It’s true, I guess. Everyone has a twin out there somewhere, and I’m holding this little receipt as a claim check, against the next road trip with mine.