Road trip mythology dispelled

The family summer road trip is one of the most satirized of American institutions, a comedy of errors whose potential for misadventure was only mildly exaggerated in the Chevy Chase movie called “National Lampoon’s Vacation.”

If not for the part about poor dead Aunt Edna being strapped like luggage to the roof of the car, in fact, the movie’s script could have been taken straight from real life.

But when the summer vacations ended abruptly in our family last year – the result of four busy adults’ work schedules and social calendars that clashed at every turn – I lamented the passing of this time-honored ritual. Not only did I miss the rare opportunity to reassemble all the scattered elements of the busy family for one sunny week together, just like in the good old days when the kids were younger and had no voice in the matter, but I suddenly found myself blessed with vacation time from work and no enjoyable way to use it.

Instead of lazing on the beach somewhere, with a hot novel and a cold beer, I got to sit on the porch of my house in Bangor for a few days and grumpily watch the crab grass grow.

After my eulogizing the demise of the family vacation in a column last summer, friends and readers who had gone through this disorienting parental transition offered counsel. In the future, they said, try to make vacation plans that don’t necessarily include the teen-age children anymore. That made sense.

So with this summer slipping away, I knew it was time to start planning that childless summer getaway. I called a family meeting recently to firm things up. The meeting lasted more than an hour. The outcome? Let me put it this way: Had our nation’s military strategists planned the D-Day invasion as poorly as my family planned one lousy week of summer, the Third Reich would be flourishing today and there would be no need to debate the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance.

The first option – that my wife and I spend a week at the New Jersey shore and visit relatives – was quickly dashed when she informed me that she had already made professional commitments for late summer that took her right out of the vacation picture. The second option – a radical notion, to be sure – was that I would go to the shore alone. The beach talk was so appealing, however, that both the kids decided they should be included in the fun. When I reminded them how they had complained for the last three years about having to endure family vacations at the beach, they cheerfully informed me that their attitudes had changed.

“It’s different now,” my son said. “I have a car, so I can drive down and take a friend with me.”

The only detail to be worked out, he said, was getting that certain August week off from work and finding a friend who could do the same. My son then assured me he would begin mulling this fabulous plan right away, perhaps even before July was over. I asked if I could strap myself to the roof of his car, like Aunt Edna, but he didn’t get the joke.

My daughter said she was almost sure she could get down to the beach, too, provided she could coordinate all of the intricacies of work and soccer practice and …

“I’d really have to visit some colleges along the way,” said my dedicated high school senior.

I suggested we hit a Boston-area school or two on our way south, then spend the remainder of the week romping in the Jersey surf. My daughter

approved the idea, but with qualifications.

“While we’re at the shore, there’s a school in Delaware I need to visit,” she said. “Delaware’s not too far from New Jersey, right? And there’s a school in Maryland, too, if we could fit it in.”

As they say in Major League Baseball, negotiations had broken down. My beach vacation was ebbing away fast, and I was desperate to salvage some part of it. I suggested instead that she and her mother go to Boston for a couple of days this week and that I would sacrifice one of my precious vacation days in August to take her to Delaware. Maryland would have to wait. My daughter said she would begin thinking about actually calling the schools in question and arranging her campus tours, perhaps even before the end of the month. The plan almost worked, too.

“By the way, Mom,” my daughter said, “have you gotten the brakes on your car fixed yet?”

Her mother responded that she had not gotten around to the brakes, in fact, since she hadn’t anticipated taking a long trip anytime soon. But she promised to begin thinking about getting the critical repair work done very soon.

By the time our little meeting had ended, we were no closer to a family vacation than when the four of us had begun trying to negotiate our way out of town for a week. But we promised to get back to one another, sometime this month, and see what we could work out. And if nothing else comes of our plans, at least the family meeting brought us all together again in the same room for an evening.

For a typical busy American family these days, I guess that qualifies as a moment to remember.