We'll see it on the way back

All families have their inside jokes. Growing up in Florida with my family of five — parents, older sister, older brother, and me — most of our memorable one-liners came from my dad.

“Go get me a butter knife!” was Dad’s way of saying he needed a screwdriver — never mind that this was a man who sold tools for a living and had screwdrivers and wrenches coming out of his ears. In the 1980s, long before Amazon existed and home deliveries were the norm, we were the only family on the block getting UPS deliveries once a week — insanely heavy boxes full of tools that the poor UPS drivers had exhaustedly dragged across the country and dumped onto our porch with a thud. Tools were always in the house, but somehow none were ever for us to use. My Mom balked every time Dad used the butter knives, but he would answer, “If I kept all the tools at home, I wouldn’t be able to sell them to other people.” He did have a point — unlike, eventually, Mom’s knives.

Then there was, “Somebody get me the hoe!” This was Dad’s way of saying there was a snake slithering too close to our house (which happens more than you’d like in Florida), and he was going to hunt it down and chop it into pieces. We’re not talking cuddly-wuddly garden snakes like the Little Rascals pulled out of their overalls along with a toad and an adorable shrug. No, we’re talking deadly rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths that would eat Spanky in one gulp and then look around for a second course of Alfalfa. Yes, the hoe was gruesome. Yes, we all ran to the scene to gleefully watch the spectacle.

Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, happy snakes: Three lies we tell children.

But the best phrase of all was, “We’ll see it on the way back.” Say this in my house, and we all bust out laughing with a collective groan. “We’ll see it on the way back” was Dad’s answer when, during a road trip, we’d ask to stop and see whatever cool thing was out the window — a Stuckey’s souvenir shop, the amusement rides at South of the Border, the World’s Largest Frying Pan, an ice cream shop, a historical marker for something important that happened right here. It didn’t matter what it was or how rare it was. “We’ll see it on the way back,” he assured us.

Nobody at Stuckey's was ever this cheerful, especially if their kid had a giant ball and a stick.

Trouble was, we never did stop. Dad was a man on a mission — he had places to go and people to see, and he wanted to go now and see them ASAP. I can't think of one time he ever stopped on the way back.

Now, don't get me wrong. These are the same loving parents who took us to Disney World and Busch Gardens and spoiled us with plenty of souvenirs and treats whenever we finally did stop. Dad just simply wanted to get where he was going. I have two theories about this. One, that it was a product of his strong work ethic: As a salesman with four other mouths to feed, it was critical that every day he got to his next stop on time and clinch the sale. That’s a tough habit to break. Or two, that driving with three obnoxious children antagonizing one another in the back seat for hours was a giant pain in the ass. (As a parent myself, I’m leaning toward Theory No. 2.)

Such a cute fam. Now imagine us crammed in a car.

After all that bellyaching, you’d think I would have grown into some sort of souvenir hoarder with a closet full of coconut-shell purses and a belly stuffed with Stuckey's Pecan Log Rolls. You’d be wrong.

My husband, Adrian, and I recently went on a cross-country trip to the Northeast, spending 13 nights on the road in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York. As you can imagine, the trip required a strict schedule and lots of planning. Here we are in Maine, where I'm pretty sure you'll get thrown out of the state if you don't take a picture of a lighthouse and a lobster.

Adrian and I have our own family joke about traveling: If it’s not on the itinerary, it’s “unsanctioned.” Hey look, there’s a cool restaurant we should try! Nope, it’s unsanctioned! Want to check out that antiques shop? Unsanctioned! I’m tired. Can I take a nap? Unsanctioned!

Thankfully, we are good traveling partners and haven’t strangled each other (yet). Still, I tried to build extra time into our schedule for “spontaneous” sightseeing. I downloaded two apps so we could see cool things along the way: one gives directions to road oddities, and the other explains every historical road marker in the United States. During our trip, we did throw in a few quirky side trips: a quick drive through a covered bridge, a quick stop at the smallest church in Ohio, even a quick stop at Niagara Falls. (Yes, they were all "quick." Don't clock-shame me.) But I never did open either of those apps or stray too much from the schedule.

I learned recently that my brother is like this, too. He sent me a copy of his family’s travel plans for Glacier National Park, perhaps assuming I would tease him for how precise it was. Instead, I oohed and ahhed at his Google Doc, which was bursting with information about rental cars, hotels, opening times, and bulleted lists of things to see. As I admired it, Sister Sledge’s song “We Are Family” zipped through my head.

As kids, we were squashed together in the back seat of that same car as Dad zoomed past the “fun” stuff. Now, as adults, here we are, plotting “spontaneous” stops on our vacation schedules. Can’t be a coincidence, right? But the irony that I am forcing all that “fun” stuff onto my husband isn’t lost on me. Is it “spontaneous” if it’s a bulleted item on my to-do list? What if my husband really would rather take a nap instead of doing something fun? It’s certainly no fun to go sightseeing at, say, the pretend village where the Pilgrims lived in the 1620s if you’re too tired to enjoy it and being dragged around by your wife as she orders you to be more enthusiastic in the photos she's taking even though it's rainy and muddy and hot and ridiculously sweaty under the poncho you’re wearing. That's just a hypothetical.

What it would have looked like if it actually happened.

They say life is about the journey, not the destination. For our next vacation, I’ll try to plan a little less and let go a little more. I’m guessing my husband will love it, even if we might miss out on cool stuff like these Civil War dioramas that tell the story of the Battle of Gettysburg, with just one eensy-weensy exaggeration: All the soldiers are cats.

In the meantime, here’s a big thank you to my dad for always successfully getting us where we needed to go — we never had a Walley World moment of any kind. Although I may not have a closet full of cheesy roadside souvenirs, he did give me a great gift: For the rest of my life, I’ll have a funny story to share with my own family on road trips. I’ll tell it on the way back, of course.