The Claustrophobia of the Open Road

“Dad, I know I had a dream that I was in real life one time.”

–Cerys Weylyn Davis

It’s been a while since the kids and I had a road trip on our own. A few years ago we were pretty restless and quasi-professionals at this sort of thing, despite a urinary incident here and there (See: The Great West Tennessee Urinary Incident https://wordpress.com/post/jbrettdavis.wordpress.com/26). So we were overdue for another one when we started off, the three of us, from Durham to Ohio for Memorial Day weekend. Within an hour and a half on the road, we stopped three times, ate twice, cried once, “cough-burped” to a concerning extreme a dozen times, listened to “We Are the World” five times (thank you, Wiley Elementary for introducing this into my son’s life), and stopped at the most horrific bathroom in the southeast (be warned, it’s off I-40 near the Greensboro airport) where I had my first claustrophobic panic attack when the door knob turned without any corresponding reaction on the part of the latch bolt.

After extricating ourselves from the gas station bathroom portal to hell, we pulled back onto the highway. Cerys, unfazed by our near brush with permanent semi-solitary confinement, asked, “What’s the environment?” to which Harlan replied “It’s that thing we live in!” And that triggered the first of many admonitions from Cerys not to use plastic straws because they get stuck in turtles’ noses. She talked without pause for the next thirty minutes, kicking the back of my seat until she got my attention. “Dad, I know I had a dream that I was in real life one time.” And then she was asleep.

Harlan, the anti-Rip Van Winkle, refused to sleep due to fear of not listening to We Are the World enough times in a day. We trudged on and Cerys woke up asking repeatedly when would we be in Virginia, followed by when would we be in West Virginia, and finally by when we gonna be in Ohio. It wasn’t long before we got stuck in a miles-long traffic jam where the highway went down to one lane through the last tunnel at the Virgina-West Virginia line — an enlarged prostate with a million other Yankee expats trying to get north through the narrow urethra of I-77.

I had an opportunity for one more bout of claustrophobia at a Sam’s Hot Dog Stand outside Charleston, West Virginia. The entire building was about 15’ x 15’. The bathroom was big enough to wash your hands, sit on the commode, rest your head on the door, order a hot dog and play a conveniently located game of video poker all at the same time. As the kids settled in, I looked around for possible escape routes — no drop ceiling so no way to climb out that way. Luckily the door opened, even though Harlan insisted on locking it (clearly unaware of the great danger of us spending the rest of our lives in there).

We finally arrived at my parents’ farm at 11:00 at night to my dad, dutifully sitting by the smoker where sixty pounds of pork sat smoking for my niece’s graduation party. I sat beside him, the nearly full moon lighting up the mist, whippoorwills making their racket in the pine forest and the intoxicating whiff of honeysuckle in the air. As if no stress ever existed, this spot on the side of the hill cradled me. As if no words ever needed to be spoken, I looked up at the stars through holes in the fog, my claustrophobic episodes a distant memory. The kids were inside with my mom beginning their farm tradition of eating enough sugar to kill an elephant and fighting sleep at all costs. All was well. We had made it to the wide open spaces of the farm.

And next time, it’s my wife’s turn.