It was a nineteen seventy something avocado green motorhome. My dad was never really taken by the idea of a new vehicle, he was relentlessly protective over his used vehicles that he kept in mint condition for years (so far as you can with 7 children). We would park at the far edges of every parking lot and walk on the hot asphalt as the heat beat down ruthlessly. This, all while the wind lifted the fine dirt that covered every surface of everything and blew it directly into our eyeballs. I remember once he was so distraught by a dent on the corner of his boat that he covered it with a bumper sticker from a company we didn’t know anything about. It wasn’t where a bumper sticker should ever be placed, so odd you would take note of it and tilt your head to the side and wonder if a toddler might have haphazardly placed it there. But at least there wasn’t a near-invisible dent.
The motorhome sat in the garage at Deep Creak for the most of the year as a home to small rodents. I know this because once, my job was to go through all the drawers and clean out the droppings they left along the way. There was a plastic carpet runner that went down the length of the hallway, I suppose so you could look through and see the difference between how the carpet should look in contrast to how the edges were darkened, faded and flattened by seven children. I guess it did it's job though, the center bit of the carpet being protected from the many spills and muddy feet tramping through. The motorhome had a couch up front that transitioned into a bed which my dad and step-mom slept on and in the back was a dormitory. My dad installed an enormous piece of plywood between the two lower beds and placed a queen mattress in between, thus creating a mega-bed to sleep 5 children. The two oldest got the top bunks. 7 children sleeping in the space the size of an average master bathroom.
It was our bed and our couch and our table. It wasn’t great.
My step-mom packed for all of us as there was such limited space our things were specifically chosen and meticulously stuffed into drawers and bags under the mega-bed. It’s that feeling you have when you have let your bags get out of control in your hotel room and you feel panicky and stressed out, but times seven.
My dad in the night would wake up and need to use the restroom and would walk across our mega-bed while managing to step on the legs of every. single. one of us as he went. With each step a head would pop up and grunt and then lie back down to snooze for five minutes, waiting for the inevitable walk back where the whole process would be repeated. The toilet would flush and the sound and smell is unmistakable. It’s a faint waft of something unclean and the “wah wah wah” of water pulling from the pump and into the sink and toilet. The door was some plastic woven material that would open and close like an accordion. The magnet was always weak so you had to give it a good slam to keep it closed.
In the morning we would wake up and have Donuts. They were the little ones in the box that you get at any American gas station quick-mart. A box of powdered sugar and a box of chocolate, stored in the fridge - they should only be eaten cold. Sometimes now when we come to my Dad’s house he has donuts in the fridge in case we want them in the morning, I always take one.
When we would arrive at a pit stop for a quick diner meal along the way someone would bend over the pit of shoes which is meant to be a stair that lead down and out of the motorhome. It was the shoe spot. You couldn’t step into the stairwell so instead you would lean down to grab the handle and stumble out along with 18 shoes. What does that look like from an outsider. A child with unbrushed hair and ill fitting clothes, dramatically opens a door and tumbles out along with 18 shoes, she squints at the sunshine and wipes the chocolate from the donut she had off her face and smiles. Ahh, fresh air, finally. Then people start filing out of the motorhome, they count, 1, 2, 3, wow that’s a lot of kids, 4, 5, 6, 7, honestly is this a school bus, 8, 9, ok I think they’re done, oh wait here come a dog too.
Yes, we took the dog. Because 9 people wasn’t enough, a chow that bites is a good addition.
We would file into a diner, “table for 9 please.” “Oooh a birthday party!” No just a family looking for some food in the middle of Kansas. How do you let 7 kids order? You can’t. So my dad would just make it easy, “Milk and pancakes all around.” This was immediately followed by grumbling, teenage angst and children’s tempers. “But I wanted the…”
He told me recently he only did that twice, but we still talk about it all the time. A staple of our childhood. We begin our story, “Every time we went to a restaurant my Dad…all around...seven kids...can you believe it?”.
The seven of us are rarely together but whenever we are we talk about the motorhome. It was a shared experience that only we knew, something that was bizarre and unique and sometimes utterly miserable. We laugh about our crazy parents and how cruel they were to shove us all in that small space just to take us to places like Missouri. We act traumatized over the experiences of the avocado motorhome, the older ones with clearer memories have more of an edge to their tone when they reminisce.
It’s true it was pretty rough, when I think about the motorhome I think about the dirty couch, the mouse droppings, the smelly fridge and the pile of shoes. But I also remember playing hours of uno on the mega-bed and mostly I remember the T.V. It was a small 6x6 cube that sat on a small rotating shelf with a sticky mat that was meant to keep it from falling off. It did however fall off onto my sister Summer’s head in the night but she turned out ok anyway.
My favorite part was when my dad stayed up late driving. We would all be cuddled up in our bed with Sleepless in Seattle playing on the TV and we would slowly doze off to the cadence of the bumping road. We would sit up half asleep and pull the thick curtain aside and see flashing lights of somewhere unknown pass by. It was a world we didn’t know but we were cozy in our bed and so anywhere felt safe. We moved along in our small home towards our destination while we slept soundly under the layers of quilts.
To me it felt safe and cozy, no lights but the glow from the T.V.