I have been thinking a lot about my father this week. On Monday I helped Braeden and Anna move all of their belongings out of Deleward and into a moving truck bound for Woodland, CA where Braeden starts graduate school at nearby UC Davis next month. As I walked from the truck parked on 400 East across the lawn and up the stairs, my mind flashed back to 24 years earlier when I was moving out of the same apartment building, walking across the same grass, and loading up my own moving truck with the help of my dad.
Braeden was just eight months old at the time. I can still see him sitting in the grass with my dad, Thelma, and cheap-enough-that-we-could-afford-it pizza and bread sticks from Sounds Easy.
It meant everything to have my dad there with me. Looking back on it I realize that Thelma was the real star. I was working right up to the very end. As with all of our moves, she did the bulk of the packing and planning. I was just the muscle. I was nervous about moving from Provo, Utah to New Haven, Connecticut. I needed my dad with me. He was capable. He was worldly. (Plus, he had a larger credit limit should we run into trouble.)
The plan was simple, but things didn’t go as planned. We would pick up a large truck from U-Haul plus a trailer to tow our still new 95 Saturn sedan. Only on the day of the move U-Haul didn’t have the truck and trailer we had reserved. It took most of the morning to find a replacement truck at another dealer. It was larger than we needed, as I recall, but it would have to do. Still, there was no trailer and wouldn’t be until somewhere in Nebraska. (Scott’s Bluff?) That meant we didn’t hit the road until much later in the day than planned and we would spend the first few days with one of us driving the truck and one of us driving the Saturn. There was a silver lining though. I remember that a large portion of our rental fees were refunded because of the mix up. We were poor and needed every cent.
I knew it would only be for a few days, but it was hard to leave Thelma and Braeden behind at Grandma Jaynes' house. While my dad and I made our way across the country, Thelma and Braeden made their way to her parents’ house in Nevada and then flew later to Providence, Rhode Island where I picked them up from the airport.
Those next few days were just me and my dad. Because of our late start, we got into the habit of driving late into the night, staying at a hotel, sleeping in late, then hitting the road again. We didn’t have hotels selected in advance. There was no internet. No navigation systems. Just a large map and looking for neon “vacancy” signs.
I remember that we stayed our first night in Little America, Wyoming. The next day included the detour to Scott’s Bluff to pick up the trailer. Finally together in the truck cab, we pressed on with each other for company and conversation. That next night might have been spent in North Platte. I don’t recall how many days it took to make the trip or all of the places we stayed. We stuck on Interstate 80 until Chicago where we merged with Interstate 90 until Springfield, Massachusetts where we turned south and followed Interstate 91 to New Haven.
Along the way we saw a transformer explode next to the freeway, I got my first taste of toll roads, and I became addicted to Reuben sandwiches thanks to an old dining room somewhere in Nebraska where most of the patrons were in overalls and many were driving tractors. I learned how to share the road with big rigs, flash your headlights when there was enough room for a passing semi to get over in front of you, and flash your tail lights in thanks when someone did the same for you.
The conversation came easy, but I only remember one conversation in particular. Our day started at a Red Roof Inn just outside Cleveland. We didn’t really know where we were on the map, but we figured Kirtland must be in the vicinity. We wanted to make a detour to see the temple and other church history sites. I asked the clerk at the front desk if he knew where Kirtland was. He gave me a strange look and said it was at the top of the hill. We were only a mile away.
We spent the morning exploring Kirtland and church history sites. Neither my dad nor I are known for speed when it comes to museums or history sites. We wanted to know it all. Once back on the road, we decided that our next stop would be Palmyra, New York. We got lost in a conversation about the Word of Wisdom for the entire drive there. I remember being surprised by how quickly the time flew. We argued about whether we would have obeyed the Word of Wisdom at the time it was given. My dad knew all the facts about how it wasn’t a commandment until much later and so forth. My point was it didn’t really matter whether it was a formal commandment or not. If God says, “Here is a good idea but you do what you want,” then it might as well be a commandment and you should treat it as such. How that conversation lasted as long as it did, I’ll never know.
Well, we made it to Palmyra in just the nick of time. It was nearly closing time when we pulled into the visitor center. But we managed to visit the Smith family home and walk through the forest where the First Vision likely took place. It was an amazing day to see those church history sites, think about the events that took place there, feel my dad’s unspoken testimony in the certainty with which he talked, and feel a connection to people and places I had never seen or met.
We hit the road again and managed to make it all the way to New Haven that night. We stayed in the Courtyard by Marriott. There was scarcely room to park the truck and trailer. The next day we offloaded the Saturn and used it to get around town as we figured out how to get into our new Whitehall apartment on the top of Science Hill on Prospect Street. Setting up the bed was the first priority. Moving the oak bookshelf was our greatest feat of strength. Two years later when we moved out of that apartment, I watched a half dozen men try to figure out how to get the bookshelf out and marveled that my dad and I had somehow brought it in.
I don’t remember too much more about what my dad and I did after that. I know he slept on the futon. We ate at Clark’s Dairy where I burned the roof of my mouth on my first chicken Parmesan grinder. He obviously flew back to Seattle but I don’t remember taking him to the airport or even which airport he used. He was gone by the time Thelma and Braeden came.
What I do remember is how connected that trip made me feel to him. How much I relied on him for assurance that I could do this hard thing far from home. I haven’t thought much over the years about what he must have been feeling during that week. How hard was it for him to say goodbye to Thelma and his new grandson who shared his name? Did he wonder when he would see us again? Did he fight back tears like I did this week making my own version of that trip with Braeden and Anna?
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Braeden and Anna kept thanking me all week for helping them move and driving to California with them. They acted like I was making some type of sacrifice. But I’d been waiting for that chance for a long time. It was my way to feel connected to my dad again and say “thank you” by trying to do for Braeden what my dad had done for me.
Braeden wanted me to ride in the truck with him when we picked it up from the Home Depot in Provo, but that was the only time we rode together. The rest of the time he and Anna shared the cab while I drove their car, Loki, behind them. There was a very small moment when I thought how nice it would be to join Braeden in the cab and conversation. But then I thought how much I had missed Thelma during that trip 24 years earlier and was glad for how much Braeden and Anna love each other.
Anna is expecting their first child. Maybe someday he or she will go off to graduate school in a far away place with their spouse and Braeden will be there to help drive. When he does, I hope he’ll tell the story about how his father helped him move just like his grandfather. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to go on the trip as well and maybe I’ll feel that connection to my father once again.
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Coralee