THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIAGE
A gust of wind catches the hem of my pink sundress, blowing it high enough to reveal my underwear to the empty street. With a payphone cradled in the crook of my neck I glance up, eyes swollen from holding back tears, at storm clouds growing in the sky. When I woke up this morning it was spring in California: sunshine, blue sky, and the smell of sagebrush. Now a massive, Eastern Sierra snowstorm is moments away from unleashing. For warmth, I have a pair of brown yoga pants and a powder blue sweatshirt in my backpack.
“Hey Dad,” I whimper into the phone. “For some reason they couldn’t finish the windows in the van today. It’s still at the shop. They took the cardboard out, so now I really can’t drive it.”
The silver Volkswagon Eurovan was a gift from my father, laden with emotion and hints of heartache from the very beginning. Originally, the van was a Christmas bonus from my dad’s previous boss, given to him just months before an unexpected layoff. Six years later, in granting me the keys to his beloved van, my dad knew he was offering me two things: a home on wheels, as well as an opportunity to rebuild our previously high-stress and messy, father-daughter relationship.
My boyfriend warned me to be careful: it was a really big, really nice van for a scrappy little girl like myself. Initially, I shrugged off the backhanded comment, my pride telling me I’d be ok on my own. But his words continue to prove prophetic. A freak windstorm last month blew out three of the van’s windows; I’ve been living in the equivalent of a cardboard box on wheels ever since.
This morning, I locked all of my belongings in a friend’s apartment a half an hour away. My cell phone is broken; I can’t even access the phone numbers saved on it. There’s no use in hitching a ride back to my friend’s apartment, because he’s working a late shift and won’t be home until after midnight.
“I think I’m going to give in and check into a hotel,” I say, hanging up the phone on my dad before the conversation changes to the other topic on my mind: whether I am going to take a fulltime position writing and copyediting for a local newspaper. It would mean moving out of the van, committing myself to a desk and one week of vacation a year, as well as a salary and benefits. The most selfish part of my soul is screaming at me: don’t give into the ease of conventionality—you can make this lifestyle work!
The thought of giving-up my passion for teaching and guiding in the mountains sickens me: I’m terrified of losing the challenges my body craves, and the sense of adventure with which my happiness depends. By the time I make it to the Motel 6, the pavement and trees are coated in several inches of dense white snow.
Safe in the hotel room I fill the bathtub with water, place my laptop on the toilet seat, and open my I-Tunes library to a mix I made specifically to encourage my whimsical soul. The first song to play: Neil Young’s There Comes a Time. As Neil assures me it’s not time to settle down, I slip into the bathtub.
The second song to play: Michelle Shocked’s How You Play the Game. I lay my head back against the tub, and let her husky voice remind me that it’s ok to lose sometimes. I close my eyes and picture my van: in the desert, dusty and filled with climbing gear, and then in the mountains, stuck in several feet of snow—with me cozy in my down sleeping bag on the inside. I let the most ridiculous memories of the van fill my thought until I grin stupidly: notes stuck under the windshield wipers, the van shaking with a combination of laughter and yells of “earthquake” coming from outside, friends quietly digging the van out of knee-deep snow the morning after an enormous storm (while I’m still asleep inside), and driving with windows down (and nose out the window) because of the overpowering smell of wet ski gear.
When my dad told me I could keep his van, I thought it was the answer to all my wayward daydreaming. Slouching deeper into the bathtub, my mind begins to catalogue the unfortunate events since becoming the driver of the Eurovan:
1. In January (three weeks after graduating from college), the van is towed, and then impounded, because I parked it on a low curb. With student loans and a lack of dependable work hanging over my head, Dad loans me $800 to rescue my home.
2. In February, I put a large dent in the front bumper while cleaning out my shared storage unit—in tears—shortly after breaking up with my prophetic boyfriend. The estimate from the body shop is around $4,000. The bumper is currently attached (a little crooked) with a screw, painted over with Rustoleum, and finished with clear duct tape (which is also holding the broken headlight in place).
3. In March, my ski partner, who works ski patrol at the local mountain, is listening to his radio, and hears my license plate called into the police for parking in the vacant lot I’d been sleeping in for the past three months.
4. In April, the windstorm blows out four of the windows. I’m contracted to instruct a course in Joshua Tree the following week, but the police department tells me if I drive without windows outside of the area I will get a ticket: I return my ice axe and crampons to REI to help cover the expense of renting a car.
From the toilet seat next to me, the Be Good Tanyas begin singing on my laptop: keep it light enough to travel. I take my eyes off the ceiling and sit up in the bathtub: an e-mail to my dad is forming in my subconscious. In one motion I step out of the bathtub, grab a towel, and dry off. In a second motion I pull my sundress over my head, step into my yoga pants, bundle up in my blue sweatshirt and race out the door clutching my computer. At the coffee shop across the street I finally slow down.
With a cup of coffee steaming next to me, I begin the e-mail:
“Dad, I’m committed,” I write, and then take a sip of coffee, staring at the words. “Thank you for your support. I’m not going to take the full time job. I’m in it for the long haul with this lifestyle—teaching, instructing and guiding in the mountains and in the desert—for better or for worse, with the Eurovan. Tell mom I really will be ok.”
Essay from April 2008
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