Trip two was a Caribbean cruise. Trip three was the Grand Canyon, a four-hour drive from our house, and they still flew me to Colorado first, which took real logistical commitment. By then, the ritual had hardened into liturgy. The suitcase. The single ticket. The gate. The lanyard.
I was ten the year I finally asked. Trip to San Diego. I’d rehearsed it in the bathroom mirror so my voice wouldn’t do the wobbly thing. I waited until Dad was alone in his office, and I said it fast before I could lose my nerve.“Can I come this time? Just once.”
Dad didn’t look up from his laptop. There was a pause long enough for hope, which I have since learned is the cruelest length of pause there is.
“Maybe next year.”
Maybe next year. I want you to understand that I believed him. I spent twelve months being extra quiet, extra easy, extra invisible because some part of my ten-year-old brain had decided that if I cost nothing, they would finally afford me.
The next June, the printer in dad’s office made its sound. Our printer had this specific two-tone warm-up. And to this day, that sound makes my stomach drop. One ticket. Phoenix to Denver. Window seat because mom said I liked the window, which was true and which somehow made it worse. She knew my seat preference and not my heart rate at gate C.Next year became nine next years.
The year I was eleven is the one that broke something load-bearing in me. They went to Yellowstone. I watched it the way I watched all of it, on Facebook, from Aunt Linda’s couch on her iPad with the cracked corner. Geysers. Bison out the car window. Ethan holding up a fish. And then the photo that finished me.
The three of them, arms around each other in front of Old Faithful, wearing matching yellow t-shirts. Custom printed: family adventure crew. They had printed three. That’s not an oversight. Nobody accidentally orders three custom shirts. Somebody sat at a checkout screen at a drop-down menu that said quantity and selected the number that meant our family is three people.
And then my mother captioned it. I can still see the exact string of characters. “The whole crew.”
My hands went cold. Actually cold. In July in Colorado, Linda found me holding her iPad like it was a dead thing. And she didn’t say a word. She just took it out of my hands, walked to the kitchen, and made me a root beer float with a scoop of coffee ice cream because she knew regular vanilla wasn’t going to cover this one.Here’s the part that embarrasses me now. I still tried to fix it. That fall, eleven years old, I made them a binder. I’m not kidding. A three-ring binder labeled vacation ideas in gel pen. I researched a Grand Canyon trip for four people, the lodge prices, the mule ride weight list, gas money. I did the math on notebook paper and got a total of eleven hundred and forty dollars for all four of us, five days. I presented it after dinner like a tiny consultant. Mom flipped through two pages, said, “That’s so sweet, honey,” and set it on the counter next to the junk mail.
