My Mother and Other Wild Animals

Not everyone wants to travel with their mother. But my mother and I have an agreement. I will take her on a wacky trip, she will complain the whole time, and together we'll love every minute. Take, for instance, our trip from Kansas to San Francisco. I blame it all on my car. The year is 2016, and I am 45 years old, in San Francisco, and broke. I suffer terribly from anxiety, especially about money, and so in a fit of panic, I scour the internet and apply for every visiting teaching position in the nation. It reminds me of dating in my 20s. Almost nobody calls me back. But as my mother pointed out when I was dating in my 20s, almost nobody still means somebody, honey. That somebody is Wichita State. The appointment is for only a month, during which time I will meet with creative writing students and give feedback on their short stories. No teaching, no class time, no committees or requirements outside of free advice. As my mother would tell you, I've always loved giving free advice. I've also always loved seeing a place I've never been to before. My mother feels differently. Not about Wichita. The problem she has is with my car, a 2002 gray and white Mini Cooper. It is absolutely adorable, but not what you might call a cross-country vehicle. We are in her house north of San Francisco, and we are having white wine to soothe her own anxieties about my trip. I assure her there are paved roads between San Francisco and Wichita, but she counters by bringing out an atlas and pointing out all the states I will be crossing in the month of October. I have not considered this. Born to southern parents, I am a suburban Maryland boy who now lives in San Francisco. My experience of America is limited to 80's malls, pickled watermelon rind, Broadway shows, and fog. It is akin to owning only volume J through K of an encyclopedia. And so in my ignorance, I assumed Kansas to be somehow just over the Rocky Mountains. My mother, a bemused 70-year-old with short brown hair and a cocked eyebrow, informs me she will not allow me to drive my car along this route. I say I need a car. She says she will not allow me to drive my car. I say I need my car. She says, You get the picture. We seem to be at a standoff. Then she gestures to her driveway. Take my car. That is how I find myself heading to Wichita in a diesel VW Beetle. I take the southern route, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas. In Arizona, I make sure to wake up early so I can experience the vast beauty of the Grand Canyon at dawn. In New Mexico, I eat my fill of tacos in a repurposed school bus outside Albuquerque. In Oklahoma, I enjoy the views of Black Mesa as I skim across the panhandle, and I know I am getting close to Kansas, when the Oz jokes start appearing. You just passed Al's Diner. I'd turn back if I were you. And your little dog too, Pet Grooming. All pet store. No lions. No tigers. No bears. Oh my. Clearly we are not in San Francisco anymore. I love Wichita on first sight. The idealized brick township of a model train set, low and calm beside a river, is a relief after the high-rise squalor of my oceanside San Francisco. In the middle of downtown, a saucer-shaped convention center seems to have landed and is communicating its alien demands. Buy tickets now for the Christmas Spectacular. Too cheap for the faculty apartments, I have instead found a room in a Victorian boarding house decorated with antique dolls, whose landlady is a dear woman in long blonde braids who spins pots in a shed in the back. The only other roomer seems to be a visiting Bangladeshi doctor with whom I have a running argument about whether ketchup should be refrigerated. It should. The residency passes without incident.