Why is it We’re Doing This?

Nobody warned me that life as a gently used MMM (mild mannered motorhome) would look like this. I may be a little mature and old fashioned looking — in truth I was pretty pampered in my early years. Now look at me, hauling this family across the country, over mountain passes, dusty rural potholes, and all that construction along the Trans-Canada. Folks we meet seem to think it’s a big deal. But if you ask me, it’s about something simpler than you’d think. I’ll let the Skipper explain. She’s the one who talked them into buying me.

I always wanted to take my kids across Canada.

I love this country with everything I have. There is something that happens to me when I touch down on Canadian soil after time away. I weep. Every time. My country is not perfect, but she is darn close to it. And right now, with the state of the world being what it is, that feeling runs deeper than ever.

I wanted my kids to feel the size of this place. To understand it wasn’t just a map on a classroom wall. To see the Rockies and the prairies and the Shield and the mighty Atlantic. To know they were Canadians in their bones and their hearts, not just on paper.

It didn’t happen. Life moved fast and sideways, the way it does, and suddenly my kids were grown and the window had closed.

My parents had a list too. Things they were going to do. Places they were going to see. They aged and became too ill before they got there.

I think about that more than I used to.

Then, a few years ago, we became GrandRaisers. We answered a call that couldn’t be ignored, and our lives changed completely, overnight, in the way that splits time into before and after. Our darling newborn grandson came to live with us. Permanently. And the retirement we had quietly imagined seemed to quietly recede into the background.

Right around that time we were watching our friends embracing the empty-nest lifestyle. Travel being the most alluring…

We could have waited. A lot of people, kindly, suggested we should. Wait until he’s older. Wait until he’s launched. There’d still be time, they said.

Really? We disagreed.

Here’s what we’ve learned about waiting: it costs. Every year you wait is a year that passes anyway, whether you used it or not.

So we bought a 25-year-old motorhome and named him Harvey. We pulled our little one out of school. We arranged our work lives, with gratitude and fortitude. And on June 1st, we pointed east and didn’t look back.

What the First Mate Is Actually Learning Out Here

People ask us about taking the First Mate out of school early to travel for three months.

I understand the question. I do. But I want to tell you what his education has looked like since well before we left BC.

He helped plan this trip. We’ve had a map of Canada in our hallway since last year to plot our route. He estimated total kilometres, calculated days on the road, worked out averages. He reads the maps. He journals. He has found fossils in the Canadian Shield that are millions of years old. He mined for amethysts in Thunder Bay. He watched bison move across an open field and stood very still.

He learned to cook bread on a stick over a campfire from a little boy who spoke no English. They figured it out together anyway.

He builds our fires every night. He washes the dishes and has learned to fish. He has met people from across this country and from around the world, and he has connected with so many of them in the easy way children do when you put them somewhere real and let them be curious.

I am not worried about what he is missing. I am watching what he is gaining.

And I am watching something else too. I am watching a little Canadian finding out who he is and where he comes from. And where he fits in the world. That matters to me more than I can say. Especially right now.

His fantastic teacher sets up video calls with the entire class. We are grateful.

A Dear Friend, and What He Reminded Us

Sometime in the early days of this trip, we got word that a dear friend had died.

He was a grandparent himself, the traditional kind, the kind who spoils them and sends them home. Even though he rarely wanted to. He was the one who dresses up as Santa for neighbourhood kids. He was also one of the ones who understood what we had taken on. He saw clearly, with that vantage point, what our life actually cost us. He encouraged us. He cheered us on. All the time. He was one of the people who made us feel less alone in a role that can be very lonely.

He died way too soon.

We were many kilometres from home, with some of our other grandchildren, when the news reached us. And as shocking as it was, it was another reminder.

Nothing is guaranteed. Not a single day.

My parents knew that. Our friend knew that. I know it now in a way that sits differently than it did before.

Why We Stopped Waiting

This trip is not a holiday. It is not an escape. It’s more like a decision we made out loud. Trust me, there is very little rest or relaxation. How could there be, for two seniors and a very curious, bright, active kid?

But we are proud GrandRaisers. Our lives look nothing like we planned. And we are not waiting for them to go back to the plan before we start living.

We are spending some of our savings. We are driving an old motorhome across a very large country. We are doing it with an eight-year-old who thinks fossils are the greatest things on earth, and who is, right now, becoming someone quite remarkable right before our eyes.

And we are doing it now. While we can. While we’re here.

Because we know, better than most, that here is not forever.

And that, friends, is all the navigation chart a vessel like me needs. The Skipper plotted the course. The Dutchman holds the wheel steady. The First Mate is collecting rocks in every province.

We are underway.

Well dearest readers, that’s it for me today, thanks for reading.
Love, Harvey