Day Fourteen: Henderson, NV, to Pismo Beach, CA

“What’s up with the RV?” “You’re driving for 15 days straight?!?” “Are you out of your blessed minds?”

They are valid questions — no doubt. And it’s just now dawning on me, as we hit the two-week mark of this grand and somewhat ill-advised adventure, that I haven’t yet told the back story. So here goes: For my entire adult life, my Dad has teetered right on the precipice of health disaster. Diagnosed with a triple shot of rare autoimmune disorders more than 20 years ago, he has been in and out of hospitals — and consciousness — ever since. My sophomore year of college, he slipped into a coma for weeks then threw himself a big “I’m Not Dead Yet” party a few months later. He was miserable on Prednisone for about a decade. Then he spent time with specialists at the Mayo Clinic, before growing frustrated with the pace. He was found unconscious in a ditch off the side of I-70 when driving East to visit us five years ago. That lead to two months of emergency surgeries and a stint at Yale, where teams of specialists marveled at his rare and impossible medical profile. He’s fallen. Ambulances have come dozens of times. Blood transfusions are a monthly, if not weekly, fact of life. Then this summer he suffered septic shock. The nurse on Night One told me to make travel arrangements; his chances were somewhere between 0 and 25 percent.

But he’s never been one to pay much attention to odds. So here we are, navigating each day at it comes. He’s been in a wheelchair for years now, and has lost most of his fingers and toes to his diabetes-like condition. He suffers from neuropathy and anemia. His immune system is shot. And he can’t function is temperatures below about 60 degrees; his circulatory system just stops pumping.

One other thing: Mack and Charlotte are his only grandkids. They usually only see him for a week each year, and even then it’s in between play dates with second cousins and other assorted California adventures. With Mack entering middle school next year, we knew this was our last real opportunity to orchestrate a longer and more meaningful time together. Since grandpa can’t tolerate the New England weather (and neither can I, if we're being honest), we decided a winter in Santa Cruz was the answer.

But why the RV? While four of us can cram into grandpa’s cluttered, stuffy home for a week-long vacation, we knew we would need more space for a longer stay. Puzzling this problem, I came up with the cockamamie scheme to live in an RV parked in his driveway as a way to find space and privacy. I expected Jonathan to dismiss the idea. He did not. This is still surprising to me. 

We’ve always talked about driving across the country with the kids, but of course the timing is never right. Other vacation plans pop up. They are too young. Gas is too expensive. And we put if off. At last, the stars were aligning and we knew it was now or never.

As for the itinerary, that was all me. We headed South to avoid weather — and we almost succeeded in that strategy. I insisted that we introduce the kids to New Orleans, which is like no other place on this planet I’ve ever been. Austin was a top priority for its music and BBQ. Kitty Hawk was non-negotiable for my pilot husband. And the rest just sort of fell into place.

The miles were long, but the journey was over in a flash. As we crested the mountains west of Vegas and passed the ‘Welcome to California’ sign today, we were giddy but also a bit melancholy. Mack immediately asked if we could do it again on the way back home. He knows we’re planning to sell the RV and the Suburban in California, but he’s not going to go down without a fight. I guess he takes after his grandfather that way.