The Wheels on the Car Go Round and Round

Somewhere between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, my husband and I surrendered to destiny.

Cutting inland on the 101, through the tawny, crumpled-velvet hills, we left the cool brightness of the coast and entered the quiet, almost holy light of late afternoon. Turning, I watched Danny Mac sleep, a suddenly angelic vision of dusty knees, sweat-curled hair and impossibly long lashes. Beside him, 2-month-old Fiona Rose stirred in her car seat--a hand drifting skyward, fingers fluttering, the flash of a sudden splayed-toes kick.

It was a moment of epiphany, caused not by the throat-closing wave of love I felt as I turned, but by the turning itself. A very specific twisting motion of waist and shoulder and head, it was a movement I had seen a thousand times as my mother handed back a tissue, crackers, an ultimatum, or peered around simply to see “What exactly is going on back there?”

“We’re in the front seat now,” I said to my husband. “The grown-ups sit in the front seat. We’re the grown-ups.”

“We’re in the front seat of a station wagon with a cooler full of egg salad sandwiches,” he said. “We’re more than grown-ups. We are American icons.”

It’s not a bad gig, being an icon, even for a week. We were driving up the coast to Monterey, our first family vacation with Fiona. “We’ll just load up the car and go,” my husband had said blithely one Monday morning as he got in his car and went. Leaving postpartum me with the kids and the AAA guide to California and a new set of lodging requirements--kitchenettes, not room service; playgrounds, not fancy restaurants. Already I was wondering how my parents did this for so many years, and I hadn’t even left my living room.

Packing took three days. On the plus side, I didn’t bother obsessing about what jewelry to take. On the minus side, there was quite a bit of diaper-counting and other math involved. Keeping in mind the favored activities of my children--playing in the dirt, spilling juice and spitting up--I simply multiplied the days we would be gone by three and packed every stitch they own. (When my husband’s eyes widened at the number of bags, I compensated by taking things out of our bag. Which was a mistake because most playing and spilling and certainly spitting up usually involves at least one grown-up, and so I spent a lot of time washing things out in the motel sink. Another iconic maternal image.)

Then came the packing of the car. Like working a 3,001-piece jigsaw puzzle, I positioned the cooler, the umbrella, the beach blankets and towels, the suitcases, the stroller, the backpack, the diaper bag, the toy bag, the cameras and three bags of groceries. These last sparked a spirited Fred-and-Ethel exchange in which my husband offered the probability that there were grocery stores north of Santa Barbara, and I heatedly explained that I didn’t want to spend my vacation shopping for groceries.

I viewed the back of the wagon, every inch of space efficiently utilized, with the pride of a pioneer woman about to ditch Williamsburg for the wonders of the Louisiana Purchase.

And then we were off.

If you haven’t been on a road trip in a while, I recommend taking along young children. They will force you to abandon any goal-oriented, drive-till-you drop tendencies you have acquired during the go-go ‘90s. A nursing infant especially will require that you stop every two hours or so, and the only scenery a 2-year-old wants to admire is scenery he can splash in and stomp on.

The sheer physical difficulty of getting the two of them out of the car ensures that there be no desultory scenic-vista hopping. You will stop, get out, lock the car. You will find really nifty sticks, sort smooth stones, dribble apple juice on ants, change a round of diapers. You will fish out snacks from the depths of the cooler, you will feed the birds, find straying shoes and hats, help count and categorize any visible animals, all amid the never-ending game of tag that begins the moment a 2-year-old’s feet hit the ground.

Making good time is no longer a consideration.

Or maybe it’s just different time being made. Slow time, steady time, pay-attention-to-the-sky-and-the-seagulls-and-”the-big-water”-time. Time to spot Danny Mac while he bounces on the bed in the motel room, time to watch Fiona’s face change when she feels that burst of wind off the ocean, hears the waves rattle the rocks on the shore. Time to hold hands with your husband, to drive slowly through redwoods and eucalyptus groves, because the traveling is the destination, and the most precious things in the world are right there with you in the car.

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Mary McNamara can be reached at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.