(UNDATED) “Love the Lord your God” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you can do these two things, Jesus said, you’ve obeyed all the law.
Jesus obviously never took a family vacation.
Our second daughter is headed to Los Angeles for a film studies program. My lovely wife, Kathy, thought a family road trip to Lala Land would be the perfect way to cap off our busy summer.
They say any good trip begins with a well-crafted plan. I’ve also observed that every marriage unites a detailed planner (Kathy) with a loosey-goosey let’s-just-get-in-the-car-and-see-where-we-end-up type (me). Some years ago, our son and I turned on the ignition in Seattle and drove to Chicago without a map and with no advance reservations. It was sheer bliss.
Alas, my wife takes after her dear mother, who within hours of our engagement had prepared a five-page single-spaced legal pad of preliminary notes for our blessed event.
And so our planning began one lazy afternoon with Kathy and I at adjacent computers scouring dozens of travel sites, where we compared the best deals on hotels. Her desire to shave off $5 a night added hours to the process. I was exhausted, but did it, of course, for love. For her part, Kathy thought those five hours spent together was perhaps the most wonderful cooperative venture of our married life and is excited to do it again sometime soon.
I can’t wait.
Animals can also complicate vacations. Two days before we left, my daughter’s horse broke through a fence and was found eating the tall grass next to the Shell station, stopping traffic in both directions. The next day, Kathy spilled a freshly broken egg on our West Highland terrier, who happily strutted about with yellow speckles dotting her pure-white coat. I was informed that one must not take such a dog to the caregiver without a complete bath and shampoo. Again, I did it for love.
When my daughters pack for a road trip, the living room looks like a clothing factory exploded. It becomes clear that our plan of one compact suitcase per person will not do. I learned long ago that for my daughters, a decent packing job requires the use of multiple plastic bags (guaranteed to rip when packing), each of which must be carefully packed and unpacked at each and every stop. Love. Love. Love.
Having realized that our stuff was not going to fit in the trunk of a Honda Accord, Kathy again excitedly went online and discovered roofbag.com. This ingenious and reasonably priced item allows a pack-rat hillbilly family to cram all unpacked items onto the top of the car.
The daughters thought a lock was essential for the roof bag, so I made a trip to the hardware store, where I bought a tiny lock that a 2-year-old could break open and snapped it in place. At our first hotel, our oldest daughter realized that despite our top-level security system, we should not leave the bag on the top of the car, so we got a hotel cart and loaded the whole bag on, only to learn that the assemblage was too wide for the elevator. Love.
Sharing a room with your wife and two daughters (ages 22 and 17) is one of life’s truly great adventures, especially when it comes to bathroom time. Once in the room, I heard the dreaded words, “I saw a Target. Maybe they have that darling blouse we saw in Seattle.” And so, unbelievably, we go shopping — the logic being, of course, that we still have space in the roof bag.
En route, Molly unveils the custom play list we will listen to for the entire trip. Music to my ears? Not really. Love.
We are only hours into the trip when I remember that Jesus actually did take a family vacation. The Bible tells us he went with his parents to Jerusalem when he was 12 years of age. The family was three days into the return trip before they discovered Jesus was not with them. The wisest man on earth had stayed behind.
I shared this insight with the women. They didn’t laugh. But I love them anyway.
(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)
