The Long Way Home

A funny thing happened on our way to sleep away camp… Well, really, a funny thing happened when we arrived at sleep away camp… And yet, thinking back, it didn’t really feel funny at the time. —

After a four-hour drive, complete with a Fribble-laden lunch at Friendly’s, we pulled into the sprawling, boarding-school campus that would host my son’s soccer camp for the coming week. All seemed fine. Yes, we were late, but we were usually late, and there were others as time-challenged as we.

Once checked-in, my husband and son returned to the car to direct us to the proper dorm room. And then, the unexpected.

Our 2008 minivan — the trusted steed to many a road-trip adventure — lunged and bucked, roared a bit, then squealed like a little piggy. It was done. It would not, could not gear up for the last few steps of our journey.

Panicked, but resourceful, we each grabbed a piece of luggage and ran to my son’s dorm room. We had bags to unpack, he had practice to make; we couldn’t stop to lament the loss of the car. Given our dramatic arrival, we kept our goodbyes short, but sweet, nonetheless. Then he was off.

There’s nothing like a broke-down minivan, hours from home, without snack or candy reserve to chill a mother’s heart. Luckily, the husband took over. As I lay in the shade on a near-perfect New England lawn wondering if I had any hope of finding a decent restroom (I did), as my two younger children fought over a battered Frisbee, our one link to a possible pastime, as I listened to scores of other parents singing with glee as they drove away from camp, my husband called AAA.

Within minutes he crafted a plan. A tow truck would take our malfunctioning minivan to a dealership. (Since it was Sunday, the vehicle would sit at the closed shop, without review, until morning.) A taxi would take us to one of the few available hotels in town (not cheap). And we’d wait for news.

Losing your car in the suburbs is a baffling experience. It reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live skit, where a handful of people are left stranded on an escalator when it suddenly stops moving. They just can’t maneuver their exit. Our hotel, tucked at the tail end of a desolate office park, did not offer immediate family activity. We could have walked the winding road out to civilization, in search of a mall, or a restaurant, or a movie theatre. But as my daughter astutely assessed, “People don’t walk out here. We’d look like gypsies.”

On Monday, we learned it was the transmission. It would have to be replaced. A new transmission would be in Tuesday morning, we could leave by that afternoon. We cabbed it to a local mini-golf. The kids jumped in the hotel pool (repeatedly) in makeshift swimsuits. My husband and I had cocktails in the hotel lounge. We ordered pizza. The four of us cuddled up on surprisingly comfortable down comforters and watched The Bachelorette. It was kind of fun.

A few days and a few hundred dollars later, we’re home. I can’t say I think of our time away as a vacation. But still, it was nice. We pulled together. We made the most of the unexpected. And we enjoyed an adventure together.

Tonight we head back up to retrieve our soccer player. I’ll be sure to pack snacks. Bathing suits. And my AAA card.