road tripping

the road trips of my childhood seemed a lot longer than they were

Our concept of time changes as we age; the months and years seem to go by faster, as the past becomes a blur. We say thing like “I can’t believe the 90s were 30 years ago” and bemoan the fact that we’re getting older. It doesn’t seem real that my kids are in their 30s. It feels like weeks ago I was taking back to school pictures.

Another thing that changes as we get older is our concept of distance. What used to feel like an all day ride in the car with your parents turns out to be only a twenty minute drive. Everything feels so far away when you’re a kid and when you grow up and start to drive to places yourself you see how skewed your sense of distance was.

My aunt lived in West Islip when we were young. Every other weekend or so, mom and dad would pile the three of us into the car to go visit our cousins for the day. We’d pile into the car with our pillows and “Yes and Know” puzzle books and settle into the back of the station wagon for a long ride. Sometimes we would take the Southern State Parkway and I’d stare at the trees on the median as we went by in a rush. Sometimes dad would take Sunrise Highway, and we’d be on the lookout for the cigar store Indian statue that meant we were about halfway there. We’d sing, we would fight, we would spend time waving to the cars behind us, throwing up peace signs to anyone who looked vaguely like a hippie. I loved the ride to my aunt’s house more than I loved the actual visit. For the ride back, we’d get into our pajamas and try to fall asleep on the way home. My sisters always passed out; I stayed awake and would sometimes just stare at the moon out of the car window, sure that it was following us home.

West Islip is 22 minutes away from my parents’ house. 22 minutes! That’s about what it takes me to get to work every day. I drive that distance for good Vietnamese food. It’s not a long ride at all, but to seven or eight year old me, it felt like an entire day.

The rides upstate to Roscoe were even more of journey. Two and half hours in the car with my aunt and uncle and cousins (different set of cousins) was a lifetime. At least twice during the summer we’d pack into their smallish sedan, a tangle of pillows and games and books and legs and arms as we all tried to get comfortable for what felt like a ten hour ride at times. We’d look for out of state license plates or search for landmarks that had become familiar to us on these rides. I remember we used to pass an amusement park - even after twenty minutes of Googling, I could not tell you what it was called - and we’d beg the adults to stop and let us go on the rides, but they ignored us completely. They were set on getting us up to the lake house and letting us loose and out of their hair. When we finally got to the part of the trip with the dirt roads we knew we were almost there. I was always sure it was close to bedtime by the time we arrived, but it wasn’t even noon. Still, I’d find a spare bed and read until I fell asleep because the ride was exhausting.

Two and half hours is nothing now. I can make that drive to the upstate house without even stopping to pee. But it’s funny how long that can seem to a kid, especially a kid who just wants to get to the place where they can run loose and catch frogs and jump in a lake. I think the anticipation of the trip always made the ride there seem interminable.

I’m sure those drives my parents took with three kids in the back of the car weren’t pleasant for them; we made a lot of noise and asked a lot of questions and moved around too much for it to be anything other than an annoyance to them. Years later, I felt my parents’ road trip aggravation as I drove my own kids to their cousins’ house in the Bronx. Constant shouts of “are we there yet” mixed with them arguing with each other or telling me they are hungry or tired or have to go to the bathroom made those drives less pleasant than they should have been. I had the good fortune of car seats, though. At least they couldn’t scramble all over the car like we did as kids. The 40 minute drive to the Bronx was otherwise an easy drive, but I’m sure for my kids it felt like a full day in the car. As they would pack up their books and toys and snacks for the ride, I couldn’t help but remember my own car journeys as a child, and allowed them to bring whatever would keep them occupied.

What we think of as a road trip when we’re children is often just a regular drive for us as adults. I get in the car now and I’m annoyed if I have to drive more than a half hour to get somewhere. I hate driving. I hate Long Island traffic, which is at a peak at all hours of the day. I long for the days when I was a passenger, when I would cuddle with a teddy bear in the back seat and try to sleep off the hours - or minutes, as it were, when I didn’t have to worry about traffic routes and construction and idiot drivers.

I’m planning on visiting my sister in Rhode Island soon. It’s about a three and half hour drive, give or take a half hour either way. My other sister will drive because I hate driving and she loves it. I’m going to bring a book and a pillow and some snacks and complain that the ride feels a lot longer than it really is. I’ll look for landmarks, like the troll painted on the bridge that lets me know we are almost there. And maybe I’ll throw in a well placed “are we there yet” just for nostalgia’s sake.