Movin' Right Along
In 1982, my dad packed up his life and drove from California to Virginia.
I only know the year because that was the summer before I moved from private school into public school, the summer I turned eleven.
Like every other summer in memory, I would spend half of it at home in Bellflower with my mom and the other half with my dad and his second wife, Kath, in Alta Loma. They were married in 1978, a few months before my seventh birthday, and their home was my every-other-weekend-and-alternating-holidays home, complete with a view of Mt. Baldy, a hot tub to cool off in, and a horse trail where I walked our dog, Brenna.
Then my dad got a new job across the country. When you’re a kid and your only choice is to watch the landscape roll by out the window, you can either be bored or you can call it an adventure. It is still one of my favorite childhood stories to tell: We were a station wagon towing a station wagon carrying a kid, a dog, and a rescued mourning dove named Birdhead.
(I’d totally forgotten the bird cage was on the roof until I saw this photo!)
We made lots of stops: to walk the dog, to check the birdcage, to get food and—my favorite—souvenirs. Stuckey’s was our go-to roadside rest stop.
At the end of that trip, I had a hunk of petrified forest, a sealed upside-down shot glass filled with sand from the painted desert, and felt pennants from every significant place we passed through which would hang on my bedroom wall through high school.
Whatever challenges there might have been on this very long drive (there must have been some?), my tween self was oblivious.
Instead, what I remember is reading books and listening to whatever my dad and Kath stuck into the cassette player: comedy routines (“Chocolate cake for breakfast!”) and Cat Stevens and the soundtrack to the Muppet Movie. Maybe this is where my love for long drives comes from: nostalgia for watching the oreo cookie cows and hore-hees smacking their lips in pastures, occasionally stopping for gas & snacks.
About mid-way through the trip, we stopped in Oklahoma to visit my dad’s brother, Jerry, his wife Diane, and their two children.
Fast forward to 2022: Both Kath and Diane are gone after long illnesses. But instead of resigning themselves to bachelorhood, my widower father and his brother have found love again. Uncle Jerry married Cherie in September, and now, in December, my dad was poised to marry Patricia. We had all converged upon the family home in Virginia Beach where my dad had traded his view of the mountains for a view of water, water everywhere.
In the wee hours of the morning of the wedding, my uncle took a fall and fractured two of his ribs. They all spent the night in the ER and still by the time lunch came around, Jerry had been discharged and we were all back home eating pizza.
The wedding went on. Not entirely as planned, but they made the best of it. That’s not the end of the story, but endings are what we make of them and beginnings can happen anywhere.
What’s most important is who we love along the way.
***
Movin' Right Along by Kermit and Fozzie
Movin' right along in search of good times and good news
With good friends you can't lose
This could become a habit!
Opportunity knocks once let's reach out and grab it (yeah!)
Together we'll nab it
We'll hitchhike, bus or yellow cab it!
(Cab it?)
Movin' right along
Footloose and fancy-free
Getting there is half the fun, come share it with me
Moving right along (doog-a-doon doog-a-doon)
We'll learn to share the load
We don't need a map to keep this show on the road
(Hey, that song is sounding better Fozzie)
Movin' right along, we've found a life on the highway
And your way is my way
So trust my navigation
California here we come, the pie-in-the-sky-land
Palm trees, and warm sand
Though sadly we just left Rhode Island
(We did what?!)
(Just forget it)
Movin' right along (doog-a-doon doog-a-doon)
Hey LA, where've you gone?
Send someone to fetch us, were in Sasketchewan!
Movin' right along (doog-a-doon doog-a-doon)
You take it, you know best
Hey, I've never seen the sun come up in the West?
Movin' right along we're truly birds of a feather
We're in this together
And we know where we're going
Movie stars with flashy cars and life with the top down
We're storming the big town
(Yeah, storm is right, should it be snowing?)
(Uh, no I don't think so)
Movin' right along,
Do I see signs of men?
Yeah, "welcome" on the same post that says "come back again"
Moving right along (nice town!)
Footloose and fancy-free
You're ready for the big time
Is it ready for me?
Movin' right along
Movin' right along
Movin' right along
Movin' right along