My guitar is the last thing I load up into my Volkswagen. I shut the hatchback and climb into the drivers seat. I plug in my phone, set the GPS for my VRBO in Redding, CA, and turn on Hidden Brain. I put my hands on the wheel and hit the gas.
I’m off!
I love this moment. The beginning of a road trip all on my own. Me in my car with the things I want to have with me during this trip. Listening to exactly what I want to listen to while I drive. I can stop whenever I want to and eat whatever I want to for however long I want to during this trip! So many possibilities and they are all up to me! I love it! Just me and my Volkswagen Golf that I call Günt!
The audio kicks in. I say out loud and in unison: “This is Hidden Brain. I’m Shankar Vedantam.”
This is going to be good!1
I am on my way to a three day retreat in Northern California with the Human Awareness Institute (HAI). The last time I headed this way for HAI I was driving with my partner Lachlan and his best friend Leah. We were meeting up with our buddies Jen and Rob to experience Connecting in Love, described on their website as “an immersive weekend workshop that is designed for you, exactly as you are now. In this workshop you will have profound opportunities for deeply connecting with yourself and others. We gently invite you to let go of the layers of defense that have kept you safe in the past, but now may just be keeping you separate”.
It was a transformative experience. So much so, that I decided to take the next workshop in the series, Loving Yourself, “a workshop that focuses on transforming your relationship with you and deepening your connection with self.” This time I’m on my own and despite my thrill at this solo trip, deepening my connection with me feels intimidating. We’ll see how this goes. I’m going to lean into the process and trust my mantra that “I am safe and I am loved.”
This trip makes me think of the two other times in my life when I've felt this same sense of potential and freedom on the road.
The first one was in 1996.
I was 31 years old. I was planning to leave that spring on my 'I am Woman, Hear Me Roar' trip across the country from Portland, OR to Atlanta, GA just to shake up my life a little bit.
That February, my granddaddy needed heart surgery. So, I loaded up my noisy, janky, A/C-challenged Toyota Cressida with my clothes, boxes of journals, and my guitar and made the hour and a half drive from Portland to Eugene, OR to be there for his surgery. I figured I could leave for my big adventure after that.
Fred Baker Moseley Sr. was a Southern Baptist minister and one of my favorite grandparents of the four. Despite the fact that organized religion pushes all of my buttons, my granddaddy was the right kind of Christian. He supported the Civil Rights Movement as a pastor in the deep south in the 60s and 70s both in his words and his actions. When he and my grandmommy moved to Oregon from Mississippi, he voted for gay rights when Measure 9 was proposed. The measure was designed to alter the Oregon Constitution to say that "homosexuality [was] abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse". He couldn't settle with that. He believed that all human beings deserve love, community, family, and connection.
On the day of his surgery, my dad, step-mom, brother, and two young half-sisters sat in the Family Waiting Area. Before his surgery, granddaddy had each one of us join him in his room for some individual time. I remember walking in. He was attached to so many tubes, but his beautiful clear-blue eyes set into his soft, warm face were shining. He smiled and patted the side of the bed saying: "Sit on down now."
He told me that I was so special to him as his very first grandbaby. I'm convinced he told each and every one of us that we were special like that in some way.
When it was just me and my brother Mark as grandkids, before Stephanie and Shannon came along, he would always tell me I was his favorite granddaughter. Then he would tell Mark he was his favorite grandson. So we both knew we were his favorites! I'm not sure how he managed it when those two girls came along 18 and 20 years later, but I'm sure he came up with something equally brilliant and heartfelt for them too.
Granddaddy reassured me that if he didn't make it through the surgery, he loved his life and he loved being a part of this Moseley clan. I rubbed my hand along his wrinkled, paper-thin skin and kissed him on the cheek and told him I'd see him soon.
He didn't make it through the surgery.
I remember the surgeon coming in and giving us the news. The first to start crying was the baby of the family, my 11-year-old sister Shannon. As I remember it, she wailed. We all followed suit from there and held each other in that moment. I have a memory of looking over at the puzzle we had been working on and wondering if we should complete it or just put the pieces back in the box.
We all went to my dad's place and started planning for his funeral. There was writing the obituary and choosing his casket—a pine box by his request. We cleaned out his apartment where he lived next door to my dad and each of us took a memento. I still have his dog-eared prayer book on my bookshelf.
My dad broke the news to my grandmommy2 in the nursing home. She had dementia and ultimately we stopped telling her Fred had died. We told her he had just stepped out and would be back soon. That kept her calm and happy until she died a year later.
My uncles David and Fred, along with my aunts Fen and Patty, joined us in those final days. We spent connected time together sharing stories and playing music. David put on Leader of the Band and it felt so right as an homage to granddaddy.
It was a lot. And we got through it as a family.
Granddaddy's will was simple, just like his life. There were a few things left behind and unaccounted for after the will was read. One of those things was a relatively new Ford Escort Turbo. The Moseley boys decided that car should go to me for my trip across the country—Fred Sr. would have wanted it that way.
So, I hit the road that spring in a newly aquired Ford that I never named with my clothes, my journals, my guitar, and stacks of CDs. I put my AAA TripTik on the dashboard and put Indigo Girls in the player on repeat. I sang along and cried every time 'Secure Yourself to Heaven' came on.
The second solo trip was the spring of 2019.
I wrote a one-woman show3, sold my house, bought a travel van and decided to hit the road to do a tour of Fringe Theatre Festivals from Portland, OR to Portland, ME.
The day I left, it had been snowing in Portland for more than a week, but I was determined to hit the road and get to Ashland that day. I needed to make it to Fresno, CA for the Rogue Festival and my first Fringe show.
Diane the Van was fully loaded! That 1992 seventeen-foot Ford Econoline was complete with bed, stove, fridge, toilet, and storage space. I loaded up my clothes, costumes, journals, guitar, and keyboard. I was set.
I put my first stop into my unreliable GPS and kept the Rand McNally map that my kid gave me for Christmas on the passenger seat just in case. I turned on the audio recording of my show and hooked my phone up to the Bluetooth speaker so I could feel it in my body.
I put my hands on the steering wheel and hit the gas. I spoke and sang the show all the way through on repeat during the five-hour trek to Ashland—my first stop.
So many possibilities ahead of me.
I had no idea what 2020 would bring.
It doesn’t escape me that this is the nerdiest of the beginning of a road trip ever!
She voted against Measure 9, cancelling out granddaddy’s vote. Needless to say, she was not one of my favorite grandparents of the four.
If you want to check it out, here’s a link to the video of Sexology: The Musical!
I loved how you wove music into each of your road trip narratives, from Hidden Brain to Indigo Girls and even your own show's audio recording. It made me think about how certain songs or podcasts become intrinsically linked to specific moments or phases in our lives. You mentioned singing and crying every time 'Secure Yourself to Heaven' came on, and that resonated deeply. Music isn't just background noise; it's a co-traveler, an emotional amplifier, and a keeper of memories. 🩵
Have a wonderful time! Excited to hear about the retreat. We all need to learn how to have a deep connection to ourselves - so hard to do when we’ve spend our lives catering to children, families, lovers, and jobs. Xo