When I Hit the Road

by Nancy J. Cavanaugh

It felt like a new beginning for us.

  But I’m not getting too excited.

  And you shouldn’t either.

  From past experience, I know bright moments like these can be fleeting, and warm fuzzy feelings often melt away faster than a thick, creamy shake on a hot, Florida summer day.

  Love,

  Me

  Dear Me,

  I promised I’d fill you in on the details of the Spring Fine Arts Festival audition, so I guess now that you’re in a good mood from the last letter about those mouthwatering burgers and those cool, creamy shakes at Chattaway, it’s as good a time as any.

  By April, I had made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t try out or audition for anything else. To be truthful, there wasn’t much left to try out for. But, in one last, desperate effort to make a name for myself in middle school, about a week after spring break, against my better judgment, I signed up to audition to sing a solo in the Sixth-Grade Spring Fine Arts Festival.

  I dressed up in an old, raggedy, thrift-store dress, pretended to be Miss Hannigan from the musical Annie, and sang “Easy Street” for my audition.

  But there was nothing easy about it.

  It’s not easy to make it to the end of a performance when you realize in the first few seconds that you don’t belong anywhere near a stage or a microphone.

  It’s not easy to watch Mr. Grimson, Mrs. Palen, and Ms. Banford sit at the long table in the middle of the gym staring at you, disbelief covering their faces.

  It’s not easy to know what to say afterward when your friends and family ask, “So how’d it go?” because the answer to that question would be, “Well, I accomplished my goal. I made a name for myself, but not one I want anyone to remember.”

  Before the audition, I practiced for weeks in the basement. I had my performance all planned out—my hand gestures, my expressions, my little dance moves. I thought I looked so good. It never occurred to me how bad I might sound. But at the audition, from the very first note, I knew I had made a HUGE mistake. And it turns out, I was right.

  Now that I’m about to head out on this widow’s bucket list karaoke road trip, I’m worried I might have the same exact feeling when Gram gets up onstage to sing. What if her first note is as bad as mine was?

  Making a fool of myself is one thing but having to sit in the audience watching Gram possibly make a fool of herself is cringey enough to make me feel more nauseous than the time I ate sixteen of my just-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. The thought of it is really enough to make a person want to hurl.

  Love,

  Me

  P.S. I remember thinking when I finished my audition that, as long as I lived, even if by some stroke of luck, I happened to live longer than anyone in all of North America, I’d never forget how awful the experience was. So, I have an inkling that you might have some recollection of this infamous day. Maybe this letter wasn’t one I even needed to write.

  Dear Me,

  It’s one in the morning, and I’m wide awake.

  Before I came to Florida, I had been worried I’d be stuck hanging out at the condo clubhouse with a bunch of shuffleboard-and-bingo-playing senior citizens, but now that we’re leaving in the morning for a weeklong karaoke-Bible-delivery road trip, I realize I’ve been worrying about all the wrong things.

  Even with all of Mrs. Brackman’s vocabulary words, including the extra-credit bonus ones, I have no words to describe the feeling of dread that comes over me when I picture two senior citizens, one middle-aged mom, and me riding down the highway headed for the churches and community centers on our itinerary.

  So many things about this summer are turning out differently than I thought they would.

  Before school even got out, Mom tried to tell me that I could sign up for a summer sports camp or join the junior summer symphony at the community center if either of those sounded like fun. But, going to sports camp when you can’t even make the middle school team was like signing up for the swim team but having to wear water wings to practice. And summer symphony? What was I supposed to play? I can’t even read music, let alone play an instrument along with other kids who, not only can play, but play well enough to want to spend their entire summers at symphony rehearsals.

  So, instead, I signed up for something that required no talent of any kind—volunteering as a day camp counselor at the rec center. I figured it would give me something to do while all the talented people of the world were off getting better at all the things they were already good at.

  But then, after I went through four all-day Saturday training sessions, learning first aid, CPR, and PEP: the Patient Enthusiastic Positive Method of Managing Young Children, some parent complained to the rec center director that, for liability reasons, it wasn’t a good idea for middle schoolers to be supervising the day camp kids.

  She was probably one of those parents who sat at home watching judge shows all day and listening to those annoying lawyer commercials that tell people to call them for help suing anyone for anything.

  The day camp director tried to tell this parent that there would be adult counselors supervising too, but that one complaining parent started a chain reaction that spread faster than the outbreak of head lice that happened when I was in third grade.

  Before I knew it, I was a highly trained, unemployed volunteer.

  This of course made me readily available for Mom’s OSSS mission.

  So, instead of memorizing the day camp counselor motto, “Expect the best, but prepare for the worst,” which we had chanted about a thousand times during our training, I should’ve been learning SSRTS—Strategies of Surviving Road Trips with Seniors—or something like that. But I’m sure that’s not even a “thing,” because there’s no way there would be any kind of preparation for the trip I’m about to embark upon.

  Love,

  Me

  P.S. On my way to the bathroom after writing this letter, I saw the light on in the living room. I peeked around the corner and saw Gram sitting on the couch holding a picture of Grandpa in one hand and a tissue in the other. Seeing her like that made me feel like a slug. I was so busy worrying about all the junk I was dreading that I hadn’t even thought about how sad Gram might still be about Grandpa.

  Gram was talking to Grandpa’s photo, telling him that she was finally going on the karaoke trip the two of them always talked about taking.

  Hearing that made me feel like a super slug.

  And then Gram cried/sobbed/laughed and told Grandpa’s photo she wished more than anything that he was still here to go along with her.

  “Wouldn’t the two of us have been a sight to see? And now here I am having to do it all without you.”

  And then she sighed a big, huge sigh that made me feel like King Kong of the super slugs.

  Dear Me,

  I bet if you visited Sunny Sandy Shores today… Not that there would be any reason for you to visit because by the time you read this letter, Gram will have moved on to that great senior citizens’ complex in the sky, where she no doubt gets to drive around in a convertible (probably one that’s even better than her Mustang) and sing karaoke every day (probably sounding better than Judy Garland or someone like that)…

  Anyway, if you did visit Sunny Sandy Shores, (who knows, maybe Mom and Dad are living here now), you’d probably still be able to see the huge, long, black skid mark Gram left on the street in front of condo building number two.

  And you might be the only person still alive who’d be able to tell the story of how it got there, because as permanent as that skid mark is, I would bet a million trillion dollars, the memory of how it got there is even more permanent.

  So, this letter is for me, not you, because this particular letter is undoubtedly unnecessary. But I’m writing it anyway in order to help me process the utter randomness of what just happened.

  We were just pullin
g away from the curb in front of Gram’s building when this super tan, wrinkled-up old lady jumped out of nowhere and walked in front of the car.

  Gram slammed on the brakes!

  The tires screeched!

  And the smell of burned rubber filled the air.

  Mimi and I almost hit our heads on the back of the front seat, and I thought for sure Gram and Mom might just go sailing through the front windshield.

  If Gram hadn’t put the convertible top up for the long trip, and if we hadn’t had our seat belts on, we would’ve all been human cannonballs flying through the air.

  Even so, it’s a wonder we’re all not wearing whiplash collars right now.

  (Maybe it was those boxes full of the Word of God in the trunk that protected us. I guess we’ll never really know.)

  Anyway, Gram threw the car into park and screamed.

  “Are you out of your mind, Gert?!”

  “Mother!” Mom exclaimed. “What’s going on?!”

  And wrinkled-up Gert walked around to Gram’s side of the car and in a raspy voice said, “I just thought there was something you should know before you leave on your silly little trip.”

  She put her hands on her hips and went into a rant about how her women’s group was not going to donate their handmade Christmas ornaments to Gram and Mimi anymore. She told them they could just go find something else to sell in their booth at the Beach Bazaar Bonanza.

  Gram and Mimi gasped so hard I was surprised they both didn’t hyperventilate.

  From the look on Gert’s face, I could tell that the sound of that gasp had given her an immense amount of satisfaction.

  “That ought to teach you to stop acting like you know every, ever lovin’ thing,” Gert’s croaky voice snarked.

  Then, she put her nose in the air and turned and walked back down the sidewalk with quick little steps toward one of the far condo buildings.

  You may be the only living person who knows that if a skid mark could talk, this is the story it would tell.

  Love,

  Me

  Dear Me,

  Do you know what’s more daunting than a widow’s bucket list karaoke Bible-delivery road trip with Mom, Gram, and Mimi?

  Finding out that before you can even leave on that road trip, the four of you have to make two hundred Christmas ornaments to replace the ones Gert and her not-so-benevolent ladies’ group decided to take back.

  And here’s another riddle for you:

  What do you get when you take an economy-sized package of pipe cleaners, five thousand Popsicle sticks, a jumbo-sized container of red and green glitter, and the largest bottle of Infinity Glue money can buy?

  Santa’s Workshop in the middle of Gram’s living room, that’s what.

  How about another one?

  What do you get when Mimi pulls too hard on the plastic lid covering the jumbo-sized container of red and green glitter?

  A glitter blizzard that forms a Christmas-colored glitter-mountain in the middle of Gram’s carpeting, that’s what.

  (And just so you know, Gram’s claim about her easy-to-keep-clean, multicolored beige carpeting is not entirely accurate. Though it doesn’t show lint or dirt, the more exact truth is that it doesn’t show most spills. A jumbo-sized amount of red and green glitter is pretty hard to miss.)

  And one final question:

  What do you get when Gram uses superglue without reading the instructions?

  A senior citizen missing six layers of skin from her thumb and index finger after Mom had to pry them apart with a razor blade, that’s what.

  I guess none of those are really riddles, because in order for something to be a riddle, it’s supposed to be funny, and none of it was.

  Since Gert’s uncharitable-ness had left us in such a lurch, the road trip had to be delayed until we could make the two hundred Christmas ornaments Gram and Mimi needed for their booth at their church’s Beach Bazaar Bonanza, which was taking place the day after we were to return from our trip.

  In a zillion years, you’d never guess Gert’s reason for the whole ruckus. Would you believe me if I told you it was all because of a dermatologist?

  Listen to this:

  Gram recommended a certain dermatologist to Gert. And at Gert’s appointment, the doctor asked her if she wore sunscreen. When Gert told the doctor “Yes,” he called her a liar. So, she called him a quack and got into a huge argument with him.

  She told everyone she’d never been so embarrassed in all her life, which I find hard to believe, because someone who acts like she did had surely embarrassed herself millions of other times in much worse ways.

  Besides, it was obvious Gert had lied to the dermatologist, because you didn’t have to go to medical school for dermatology to be able to tell that there was no way even one drop of sunscreen had ever touched Gert’s skin.

  So, if you ask me, she embarrassed herself.

  Anyway, because Gram was the one who recommended this dermatologist, Gert decided to blame Gram for all her embarrassment. And, she decided the best way to get back at her was to have her women’s club give their ornaments to a different charity.

  (Mimi found all this out after calling a few of her prayer partners at church.)

  So, problem-solver that she is, Mom said, “Why don’t we just make some Christmas ornaments for your booth? It’ll be easy and fun!”

  Can’t you just hear Mom saying that?

  And even though staying back at the condo to make Christmas ornaments meant Gram would miss her first karaoke contest, Gram and Mimi decided there was no choice but to delay our departure.

  So, we scoured all the newspapers in the condo lobby for craft store coupons. Then, we bargain shopped at the Queen of Crafts and at Everybody’s an Artist Emporium. And before we knew it, Gram’s living room looked more like Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole than a condo in Florida.

  The four of us sat hunched over TV trays gluing Popsicle sticks, sprinkling glitter, and twisting pipe cleaners into bells and wreaths and candy canes. And while we worked, the Christmas Choir Carols CD that Mimi brought down from her place played in the background.

  Listening to Christmas music and making Christmas ornaments in June was wonky enough, but when Gram and Mimi began singing along, things got even wonkier. Hearing Gram’s singing voice enlightened me as to where I’d gotten my singing talent. And imagining what that voice would sound like from the stage of a karaoke contest filled me with a queasy wave of nausea from head to toe.

  Adding to that queasiness was the realization that if you put mine, Gram’s, and Mimi’s talent for crafting all together, it probably wouldn’t even equal the amount of craft talent Mom possessed in just one of her pinky fingers. My prediction? This delayed departure might be much longer than anticipated. Making two hundred ornaments using such a limited pool of talent would be challenging at best and impossible at worst. Most likely we’d fall somewhere in between.

  Love,

  Me

  P.S. When I got up to grab more pipe cleaners from the coffee table and my hand brushed against the photo of Grandpa that I’d seen Gram talking to, I felt my karaoke contest nausea melt into something for which I had no words to describe.

  Dear Me,

  Breaking news at Sunny Sandy Shores—five o’clock update—I’ve been promoted to sergeant of Mom’s OSSS mission.

  Make It, Take It must be having the crisis of a lifetime, because after about fifty phone calls interrupting our ornament-making marathon, Mom told us she is flying home in the morning, and she’s leaving me here.

  Funny how one of the reasons Mom made me come with her to Florida was because she didn’t want me to be home alone all day while Tori and Annalise were gone at their camps and rehearsals and Dad was busy with work. But now that I’m in Florida and she isn’t staying, she’s leaving me in charge. Does that ma
ke any sense?

  She says she wants me to take notes about everything that goes on with Gram while she’s gone, especially anything that, “proves Florida isn’t the best place for her.”

  Can you believe she actually said that?

  If she wants to be a mole with her own mom, that’s one thing, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be one.

  I’ll tell you something, because you won’t tell Mom, and even if you do, by the time you tell her, it won’t matter anymore, I get why Mom wants Gram to live by us, but I think Gram really likes Sunny Sandy Shores. And I know all these old people do kind of goofy things, well, actually, really goofy things, and I sure wouldn’t want to live here. (I guess I shouldn’t say that because if you’re really, really old, maybe you’re living here now. If that’s true, no offense.).

  But all that’s beside the point, Gram seems to be having a good time, and she and Mimi seem to be really good friends; so, just between you and me (I guess I should say, between me and me. Ha ha!), I won’t be writing down anything that will help Mom’s OSSS mission.

  Once the lieutenant leaves, I’m in charge, and I’ll be changing the goal of the mission. For me, it will be about surviving the road trip, getting back to Sunny Sandy Shores, and finishing out my deployment here in Florida. Most importantly, it will be about not interfering in Gram’s new Sunny Sandy Shores life.

  Mom says she’ll only be gone a day or two, and then she plans to meet up with us wherever we are on the road trip. (For all I know, we’ll still be here at the condo making ornaments, especially now that the only elf with any real knack for this kind of handiwork is leaving.) But I know Mom and Make It, Take It emergencies. Sometimes they last more than a couple days, and this one seems like a doozy.

  So, starting tomorrow, I’m lead elf at Santa’s Workshop.

  Talk about pressure!

  What if we have another glitter explosion?

  Or another Infinity Glue incident?

  My day camp volunteer training didn’t equip me for anything like that.