“Life is for living,” Dad always said.
He meant it too. I remember the five of us, him, Mum, me and my two sisters, all packed into that car that served us for my entire childhood driving down the highway, a good five kilometres under the speed limit heading to some pseudo-famous attraction Dad had found in his magazines, or had heard an ad for on the radio, or had heard from a friend of his.
He had a notebook, he had it with him always. He filled it with notes about places to go, people to see. Mum called it a diary, my sisters called it a scrapbook, he called it a notebook, since it was his, and he should know, I followed suit. I remember, not so vividly now, but I still remember, when I realised that he had several notebooks. Each of them filled with random bits and pieces and when the info was used, like if we had gone to a place he had written in it, or he had read a book, or watched a movie he had noted down, he would get a red pen and he firmly crossed out the item with a single line. He always said that if you scribbled something out, youd never know if youd done it or not. One line meant you can tell at a glance if something is complete, and you can still see what that something is.
He never showed me where his completed books were kept. I knew he would have them somewhere. He was that kind of person. He hated throwing things away, especially things that were irreplaceable. Kinda why we had the car for so long, I guess.
I remember one trip we took because of his notebook. It was summer, or around that time of year. It wasnt hot, but the blankets were back in the cupboard and Mum was talking about taking my sisters to the pool – theyre twins, everything they do has to be the same. Even now they live next to each other, they work at the same place. They grew up inseparable and just stayed that way. We all joke that theyll end up marrying twin brothers. They say they arent the marriage type.
So this trip. It was a long way off, a few days to even get there, Dad said. He had been planning this one for a while, it seemed. He had heard of this place when we were super young, and each time he finished a notebook, he would make this place the first entry in the new one. While he waited for the three of us to be old enough for the journey – he never flew in a plane in his life – he would ensure he would never forget this one place.
I dont remember what the place is called. I remember it started with a K, but that doesnt mean a lot; far too many things around here start with K. I looked it up later and it had been a thing since Dad was a kid.
“Life is for living,” he said. “And Im going to make sure you get the lives I missed out on.”
That second part was rarely said, and when he did say it, Mum always stayed quiet. He said it so sadly. Again, I was an adult before I realised the implications of all this.
We all packed into the car at 3 in the morning on a Sunday. I remember it was a Sunday specifically because my sisters were bickering about not being able to go to church. In fact, when they had been woken up, they had automatically got their church clothes on. Mum not only made them change, but she also made sure that those clothes didnt come with us. It was the one thing her and I bonded over as I was in my teen years; the disdain for church and all that came with it. The girls and Dad were the opposite. They loved it, although Dad was less intense.
I remember being awake for most of the first day of the trip, watching the sunrise off to the left as we tried to coax more speed out of the car with several rather embarrassing chants. The girls had whined and complained about church until they fell back asleep. They missed the sunrise, something I reminded them of for longer than I maybe should have, but thats what the older one is for, right? Besides, I needed something; it was two on one every other argument.
This trip was my first time spending a night away from the house without it being a friends sleepover. Which meant this was my first experience with motels – not hotels, motels. Highway side, dingy looking, cheap motels.
We werent rich, we never were. We did alright, and given the story Im telling, my sisters and I never wanted for much. Sure we missed out on some things our friends got, but Mum and Dad always made sure we had good shoes, a good bed and warm food. Again, more realisations about what that meant were made as an adult.
We had two rooms at these motels. One for me and the girls, one for them. My sisters and I have grown closer as we aged. We werent ever not close, but as teenagers, especially with the five year gap between us, things were not always smooth. But those motels, having to share with identical twins who have the overwhelming urge to do everything together was my deepest layer of hell. My therapist has a notebook of her own on my childhood with those girls. She could tell you far more about it than I can articulate.
As you may have already guessed, sleeping well with those two in the same room, often in the same bed, was not a thing that happened. Thank god I had my own room back home, with a lock.
I tried to catch up on sleep in the car, but the girls were wide awake for our vacation by day two and everyone else wanted to talk the whole way there. It was also about this time that I discovered that I could get very bad travel sickness. More unplanned stops were made to deal with that.
It was nearly four full days of driving to get to the K place and when we got there, and saw the look on Dads face, not to mention the twins and mine as well, it was worth the vomiting, worth the lack of sleep, worth the bickering about church.
“Its time to live,” Dad said as we all entered this gigantic water park that existed way outside of any part of the world we had known before this.
I love waterparks, and I live near one of the biggest in the world now. I go there once a year with whoever Im seeing at the time and my son. I always tell him what Dad told me and for the first birthday after he could write proper sentences, I got him a notebook. But I never went back to the K place. My sisters never did either.
As we explored the park, which was throbbing with other people who had made a similar journey to us, Dad told us about how it had opened when he was younger than we were, how his own parents had scoffed at the idea of coming here, and told him it was never going to happen. He even went to the school and asked if they could make it a field trip, but the distance between here and where he grew up was even further than where we lived back then. I thought he was going to cry right there in the park and I made ready to bolt; nothing like a father crying to embarrass his teenagers. But he didnt. He kept thanking us, and Mum, and saying over and over how it was exactly like he had dreamed it.
We spent three days at the park, my sisters and I rode everything, while our parents did their own thing while we were running around like idiots. We found them for meals, and then again at the end of the day. But we were free. I dont know what my sisters did while waiting for the queues to shorten, but I made several friends – friends I never spoke to again, but friends nonetheless – I even had my first kiss that weekend. I wont say it was any good, but for me, at that age, it was heaven.
But then, all too soon, we had to pack the trusty wagon again and head home. Three worn out children and two incredibly sacrificing adults, on the road after an unforgettable experience.
I asked a question to Dad some time after this. It was the worst question I ever asked him. It was a question that humiliated the two of us for the rest of his life.
He was in his study, the basement, really, in which he had carved out a small section of for himself. He was looking at the current notebook. I knew that he knew I was there, standing at the door, but he didnt tell me to come in or leave. I knew what he was doing, and I didnt want to interrupt. He leaned back, in his hand a familiar red pen. I can still hear the leather of his chair creaking as he moved.
You can talk to anyone of our family, and you can ask them about Dads famous sigh. Everyone has heard it. After a big dinner, at the announcement of an engagement or a baby, at a funeral as the eulogies finish. It meant so much that cannot be put into words. I heard that sigh, really heard it, for the first time as he took that red pen and put a single, firm red line through the K park in the notebook, to me, this is where I consider myself to have become an adult. Finally hearing the sigh and understanding how much stuff was in it. Then he turned to me and I made the first mistake of my adult life.
“Why didnt you go swimming, Dad?”
He looked at me, and turned his wheelchair towards me. The chair I knew that he was always in. The chair that he had been in since he had been a child.