06 October 2003

The Navigator

Looking back on the vacations my family took when I was growing up, it�s evident how strapped for cash my parents were and how creative they had to be to give me the �Summer Vacation� fodder I would need for school writing assignments. Mom and I would accompany my dad on business trips, usually to New Hampshire, Upstate New York and Boston, and would spend time relaxing by the hotel pool, playing mini golf and going to movies. For a seven year old little girl, simply going to a hotel for a few days, swimming in a pool and eating burgers in your hotel room while watching free HBO is heaven. Even better were the car trips, always on leisurely back roads, playing games of �spot the state license plate� (I had a handwritten list) singing along with my dad�s Neil Diamond tapes.

As an adult I realize that every bit of those trips, with the exception of the mini-golf and movies, were free for my parents. Dad�s company paid for the hotel room, the burgers, the HBO and the gas for the road trip. All mom and dad had to do was supply the entertainment, and I had wonderful vacations, all within a five hour drive of my house.

Right about when I turned ten we went on a non-work-subsidized vacation to Maine. For the first time in family vacation history, dad had me sit in the front seat and mom in the back. He handed me a road atlas. Each state we were to drive through was marked with a masking-tape place holder and his neat, engineer printing marking the state (numbered in sequence, too). This was my first attempt at being the �Navigator.�

Dad had the routes in the first two states, New Jersey and New York, traced over in red marker but the rest of the way was open to interpretation. Not one road was a major highway. The entire trip was a web of county roads and tiny towns and quaint pit stops. I navigated us all the way there. Dad let me pick roads. He asked me questions like, �Which one looks like the shortest trip?� and, �Are we going North or East now?� and, �Are you sure we should have made a left back there?�

At the time, I thought I was selected to help him because my mother has no sense of direction. I know now that this was a learning experience masked as a fun adventure. I am also aware I was being educated for future trips and that my navigational skills were being honed so that I could adapt to road closures and for getting us out of the Bronx after a Yankee game. I was being groomed to be my father�s right hand man, or girl, or whatever and to be able to take care of myself as an adult. I continued to navigate for dad until I went away to college.

Over the course of my life, especially in college, it became almost a game for me. One time I set out to, map-less and going purely on gut instinct and direction, get from my college to my parent�s house without setting foot on any Interstate Highway. I managed to do it once and excitedly ran into my parent�s house to tell my dad all about the cool way to my school that made a three and a half hour trip into a five hour expedition.

The list of state license plates and mottos which I still have, and the calls I get from my friends when they are lost are a testament to summers in the Impala: windows down, singing along to �Sweet Caroline� and squinting at Rand McNally�s 1979 rendition of Massachusetts.

Thanks, dad. Good times never seemed so good.