Bus stop

Describe your most memorable vacation

The thin winter light was brightening as I sat in the Greyhound station in Gainesville, FL. It showed the dust on the windows and in the air, but the dinginess of the bus station couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm.

The dust motes lazily floating in the air matched my feeling of freedom, of rootlessness.

The road was calling; and like always, I was answering.

Linus from Peanuts said once that happiness was “having three things to look forward to and nothing to dread.”

By that definition, I was happy that winter morning. As I sat in the orange plastic bus station chair with my backpack under my feet, I considered things.

First, I had just completed my freshman Fall semester at the University of Florida. Despite a challenging schedule, I had successfully juggled football games, keg parties, dating, and studying. My three As and one B would please Pop.

Secondly, I was traveling by bus from Gainesville up to Tallahassee to rendezvous with big brother Doug for a few days. Although I was heading into the heartland of our most bitter rival—Florida State University—we had beaten them in that year’s football game; so it would be a triumphant visit.

Finally, we would be taking a road trip from Tallahassee to our home town of Boca Raton for Christmas. We had the trip to look forward to, as well as the holiday, being back home, and seeing old friends. My cup runneth over.

The three-hour bus trip to Tallahassee went through one of the most beautiful regions of Florida; the lowlands in the crook of the panhandle.

Sleepy little one-stoplight towns with names like Chiefland, Perry, Cross City. Rural woodlands, live oaks, Spanish moss and dark meandering rivers. This was the country of William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty; country where the heat and humidity matched the smoldering storylines of their classics.

I looked out the window when we stopped briefly in these tiny towns and I felt like I was looking at some of the characters. Old men in stained wife-beater undershirts sitting on benches, talking. Barefoot women going into convenience stores with dirty kids in tow. Rundown houses with weedy lawns.

I walked the two miles from the Tallahassee bus station to Doug’s tiny apartment building just off campus. They were single-story units, clean and functional; but from the looks, very affordable. A Southern Rock song was blaring from one of them. 

I would have been disappointed if it wasn’t. 

The next few days were poignant ones. We were no longer the kids who fought and bickered and had to do end runs around Mom and Pop; we had advanced. Not yet to full adulthood, but to an intermediate level.

We both knew a new relationship was dawning. What that was and how it was to function was unclear. Our discussions wandered unchecked as we spent a few days walking around the deserted campus and Capitol city.

One day, we ended up at the Junior Museum, a working farm and exhibit of early homesteading. We paused at a split-rail fence and watched some goats grazing.

It was a pivotal moment that I remember with clarity.

“What should we should do about Mom and Pop when they get old?” Doug asked. He didn’t look at me. “Put them in a nursing home?”

It was such a jarring question that I didn’t answer right away. At the time, they were in their late 40s and I just vaguely assumed things would continue unchanged. Doug, several years and a few changes ahead of me, had a better grasp of things.

My world suddenly contracted. Mom and Pop were not gonna continue forever. They were finite; one day they’d be gone. One day we’d be gone.

And it would be up to us to shepherd them through old age and death just as they had guided us from birth to the cusp of adulthood.

It was a sobering topic that needed to be thoroughly unpacked over a few pitchers at the FSU student center.

After several days, the time came to hit the road. Doug’s car was an ancient powder-blue Toyota with bald tires and an 8-track player; the faith to embark on a 500-mile trip in such a vehicle could only be found at that age.

We drove east across the northern part of the state and as the golden-rust winter fields drifted by, we sat in a comfortable silence, listening to classic rock. Now and then, an old barn or farmhouse would appear. Sometimes we’d explore abandoned ones.

We toured Fort Clinch State Park, an 19th-century fort at the northern tip of Amelia Island on the Florida-Georgia line. In addition to the fort, Amelia Island is reputed to have scores of places where pirates buried treasure.

That night, we camped in Fort Clinch State Park. The smells from the pulp mills a few miles north in Brunswick, GA, reminded us of all the times we drove down to visit our grandparents.

In our tent, in the dark, we discussed things; some funny, some poignant, some frictional. Some things that had long festered with one of us had to be resolved before we could move on.

The next day we continued south, to Daytona Beach, to our grandparent’s house. It seemed much smaller than we remembered. The neighborhood seemed seedy; the corner store now had bars on the windows. 

We found the cemetery where they rested. Neither of us spoke as we looked at two stones, two sets of dates, both with our last name. I think we both realized one day we, too, would have such stones with our own names and dates. I thought about the poem The Dash and the brevity of our years.

We camped at nearby Gamble Roger’s State Park. That night in the tent was a different sort of discussion; it was an exchange of dreams, ideals, fears, hopes. It was a side of my brother he’d never revealed to me. 

The final day was a leisurely drive down to Boca via A1A, the road that hugs the Atlantic coast. With the windows open, the sea air swirling around us and the occasional cry of a gull, we just talked as two brothers; equals now, partners who together would ease the family transition when that time came.

As we came in the front door, Mom…like our grandparents’ house…seemed a bit smaller, frailer, even though I’d only been gone four months. Pop, too, rising from his easy chair to hug us, seemed older.

But the Christmas tree, the old familiar scratchy Christmas LPs, our dog…I felt something click. Home.

And home it would be until some day in the distance when it wouldn’t.

But that was OK. 

My brother and I would handle it.

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