Frost Free Holidays
take your grattitude-in-all pill and got to the fuck to bed
We travel. We meet people. We travel.
The weather up north has reduced our options and we run south almost as fast as we can. What does it mean to blow up your whole life and start over, nearly completely, and decide to recover from western ‘civilization’ family dysfunction, and adult traumas.
What would it look like to find new people that have capacity for love and support and kindness?
Sometimes we visit people we have met elsewhere. This is our more than Hallmark postcard holiday. Gratitude to have met amazing folks and be welcomed into shared space and experience not by circumstance, but by choice.
Warm welcome and a place to park.
Weaving well traveled paths south and west of our last stop in Indianapolis, we diverge and turn due south before the Oklahoma border and into northwest Arkansas.
There, we find our friend Dada who lives on an intentional community on the outskirts of Fayetteville. They, Dana, are as bright and positive as they were when we left them in Ontario last summer. We were all exhausted by the end of camp and have since had a moment to recover.
Our host shows us the town, takes us ice skating and shows off the library where Kid gets a chance to drive a heavy truck simulator with a manual transmission. They hold the key in start so long the digital engine dies. They do well with the slow paced simulator and kind of have the whole gear, clutch thing worked out enough to move. We erupt in laughter when Kid mows down a stop sign and has to start over.
The community’s gardens have frosted out for the season, the sunflower heads already picked thin by birds. The spent foliage of the garden offers seasonal death, yet on Friday night the communal dance hall lights up. A fire outside offers warmth from the chilly night while the banjo, fiddle and guitar emanate from within the second story dance hall, along with the drum beat of square dancing feet.
Nomad Dad can exhale for a minute.
We are safe.
We are warm.
We are in good company.
Even if Nomad Dad isn’t ok.
It is ok not to be ok when there is trust, when others open to understanding.
One of Nomad Dad’s masks can relax when there are trustworthy folk hanging with Kid, and when Kid is laughing with another everything is good.
The internal pressure to be and do for another fades temporarily without the pressure to perform as a parent.
Pressure.
The internalized pressure within a parent to do better than what was given them. The pressure to be ever mindful to create from a positive space instead of through punitive parenting.
That pressure fades in community when others show up in amazing and unexpected ways. Dana is not the first to show up on this trip, and they won’t be the last presence for Kid before we find ourselves in our winter stomping grounds.
If you want to get Kid talking, ask them about summer camp at Keewaydin. Their eyes light up and their speech quickens.
They did the hardest thing they’ve ever experience and they did it with joy. Were the six weeks in the Ontario wilderness easy? Hell no. Would they do it again? Hell yes.
A happy kid in a happy place with a happy memory. Normal. Hanging with camp people draws out those experiences in a shared space far away.
Yet that parental guilt creeps in now and again. Nomad Dad is aware of it, and has yet to root it out at its source.
There’s a part of him that believe he can’t be or do enough as a parent because he knows first hand the cost of parental abdication around meaningful support, guidance and responsibility. He feels overly responsible on one hand and in the other hand holds the perspective that Kid is the only one in the end that can show up for themselves.
It is as if Dad’s meta were saying, “Let me prevent you from experiencing the pain I witnessed. Let me guide you past the neglect and abandonment. Help me to allow your spirit to come forward, not for me but for you.
It’s hard to parent well when the parent is emotionally overwhelmed. Perspective comes in bits and pieces instead of a long, slow song.
A lifelong relationship ends in Nomad Dad’s life. He’s grateful for the wisdom of his former self that took to the road to invite new people and possibilities. He’s grateful to his former self that he didn’t bow out earlier. He’s grateful for critical thinking and exploration of possibilities that are seem mutually exclusive, but are not.
He’s grateful for all of those that have lead him to the here and now. In his best moments he knows that Kid will have to tread a similar path through a wily world of unknowns.
We travel cross country and though our mixed feelings about Texas without event. We sleep in places known to have so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ and drug traffickers adjacent to dominantly white, middle class snow bird communities. We wake up tomorrow and do it all again.
Some have suggested that Nomad Dad is running towards something. While avoidance is a legitimate strategy, when we look deeper into the archetype of the seeker we find unmet needs.
Nomad Dad has a conversation with another nomad in the parking lot where javalina and mountain lions are bigger existential threats than inconvenient immigrants. An old dude with a black and tan chihuahua that finds the most isolated spots he can in warm valleys.
Nomad Dad wants to isolate like this. Sometimes he needs it, especially after running across the country with post holiday traffic.
He is not OK. All of the triggers are coming up after family disagreements and the final reveal of true colors. He won’t take support for granted ever again. He dreams of the desert where there are stars from horizon to horizon to sleep under and consider when he can’t sleep past 3:30 am. He dreams of hot springs where all of the internal pressure can dissipate with some grace.
He cancels with clients and hopes for the best because his cup is empty and in need of recharging in the yellow, spent grasses and Ponderosa Pines of New Mexico.
We haul ass across the country. As much as we can haul ass in a rig with a 70 mph speed limiter. The miles tick by and Dad just processes. Fall break is going to be a little longer this year, sorry Kid.
Nomad Dad is grateful we have everything we need on our backs, in the giant green turtle with the manual transmission and the amazing exhaust break that keeps them under 55 mph on a 16 mile downgrade.
This post is late in coming. Between the travel and the internal disruption of drama we have been busy and preoccupied. In the coming days we hope to settle into southern Arizona and Dad is going to keep posting new material from our travels, especially across New Mexico.
The good news is that we’ve found some new parts of ourselves while cooking curried chicken on the bumper in a Oklahoma rest stop and wandering the mountain roads and passes of New Mexico. There’s something to be said for choosing places where the 5g can’t find us.
Sensing with you across that vast land to somewhere - nowhere - now here ..... finding the warmth in your boots to be enough to lead you to the warmth in the place ...
My god. You do write well. I’m so sorry for the depths of pain you are bravely trying to hack thru. The parental angst is particularly relatable. Hang in there buddy- find those kind laughing people you both need. Godspeed.