The land driving east across Washington to the desert steppe looks stretched and spotted like the hide of an old reptile. Just flecks of sage brush, land that looks scarred and weathered, like it’s already been burned or is about to. Crossing the river at Vantage it all opens up as far as you can see until the earth fades into a distant purple-blue. And the sky, as wide and never ending as the land, stretches out like that too. Driving east for the afternoon is a good time to kick back and reflect. There’s not much else to do.

Our oldest daughter Lily had her first health issue as a young adult to manage herself, probably an ulcer, and we worried she wasn’t prioritizing her health over her school work. Dawn wanted to be there in person if Lily needed to go to the ER again, and to ensure she was okay. But Dawn was too busy with work and asked if I could go instead because my work hadn’t resumed.

It’s been a funny couple months. The work dried up at the end of June so I took the summer off, as I often do. But to say I took the summer off makes it sound like I had a choice in the matter. It’s a way of pretending I have more agency over my work—but it’s the actual “agency” I work for that has the leverage. I tell them when I’m available and they staff me when they can. They can only do that once they staff their employees, then they turn to freelancers like me. So it could be tomorrow I start, or maybe October. Then it should go until next summer again.

I used to feel a lot differently about work than I do now. I felt like I owed them, so work came first. But I remember the day that changed, around the time my father-in-law Dick went into the hospital with a brain tumor. I’d taken a day off and then gone in to the office on a Sunday to get my laptop. It was quiet and dimly lit and all the cubes were empty. I looked at the pictures of my kids on my desk, my treasured little things. And I thought what a fabrication it was, work: how little it mattered. Dawn’s dad was in the hospital fighting for his life, that’s what mattered.

I’d driven Dick to the ER that night and recalled what it was like in the dark of late November getting him to leave the house, his anger and fear, packing an overnight bag. The fact he never came home. And he hadn’t really retired when he died, at 69. He and Dawn’s mom had just started traveling in Europe and had lots more to see.

Then later that year my stepdad John died too, also 69. I wasn’t quite 40. It’s these brushes with real life, which often involve the loss of it, that remind us it’s fleeting. I wanted to get in as much as I could.

Driving east across our state takes four hours. The stretch from Vantage to Spokane is about two and a half, a couple long CDs on the car stereo. The flat, sprawling landscape can be soothing or mind numbing, with just the occasional barn or distant hills to consider.

I’m glad I have the time to be with Lily this week. We won’t have to worry about motivating her to work harder in school: it will be more about balancing work with life, perhaps undoing some of what she learned from her parents, how much of ourselves we invested in our jobs. Unlike your kids, the work does not love you back. It can take your whole life to learn that.

Categories: Memoir, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, pacific northwest, parenting