This post was written by my wife, T Turk.
When I was a child, my parents and I would take a road trip every summer after I finished camp.
The three of us would pile into our Toyota Camry, my parents in the front and me spread out in the backseat. We drove to Boston, Lancaster, Williamsburg, Quebec and Toronto, just to name a few of our destinations. There were no iPads back then and I couldn’t read in the car because after five minutes I would feel like I needed to vomit. I slept, my mom read and my dad drove. After a few hours I would wake up, bored, full of replenished energy and eager for entertainment.
These were the times when I developed a love for the Beatles, oldies songs and yes, even some classical music. These were the times when we would tell knock knock jokes, play games like “I’m going on a picnic” or search for clouds that looked like objects and animals. These were the times when I would sit quietly in the backseat and rip up tissues and then put the pieces on the top of my dad’s head while he drove. A small mountain would build slowly until an avalanche of tissues would fall down on top of him, leading my mom and me to erupt with laughter.
Last week, I had hoped we could recreate some of these childhood memories. We were fortunate enough to be offered a loaner car from Toyota, a Sienna minivan that would fit our immediate family and my parents comfortably. We had been talking about the trip for a while but we’d have had to take two cars to go as a group; Toyota’s generosity enabled us to all travel together. The trip was a chance for the six of us to make memories together; a time to give my mom a “break” from the mundane day to day tasks of work, household chores and taking care of my dad.
There was a moment during the six-hour drive back home when the kids were sitting quietly in the backseat with their iPads. I turned around and noticed that my dad was giggling quietly because my mom had fallen asleep with her mouth wide open. I grabbed my phone, snapped a picture and we both laughed even harder. Our laughter woke my mom, whose facial expression went from confusion to an irritated grimace and then quickly to laughter, as well.
For those few minutes, I forgot about everything.
I was transported immediately back to my childhood. I tuned my Spotify to the Beatles Greatest Hits station and the songs started to play. Almost immediately, Aaron, my mom and dad and I started singing along. My dad, Alzheimer’s diagnosis and all, knew every word. We sang together in unison for song after song. The kids heard our voices and pulled their headphones off to see what was going on. E, who has also developed a love for the Beatles, started bobbing his head along with the music too. S followed suit and together we all sang and danced along together. The only thing missing was the tissue mountain on top of Aaron’s head.1
When we were about twenty minutes away from home, my mom turned to the kids and asked them each to say their favorite part of the vacation. S exclaimed, “The waterfalls!” E followed with, “The awesome Play Museum!” Aaron mentioned that he enjoyed playing soccer with E and my dad during our stop at the Inniskillin Winery. Then I turned to my dad and asked him the same question.
He couldn’t answer.
He looked confused, bewildered by the question. My mom turned to him and asked him a series of other questions about our trip over the last few days and he had no idea what she was talking about. He didn’t remember getting soaked at Cave of the Winds or seeing the Horseshoe Falls up close on the Hornblower boat ride. He didn’t remember seeing the fireworks at night with Aaron, S and me or following the kids through the Strong Museum of Play. He didn’t remember staying in three different hotels, crossing the border into Canada or the seemingly endless car rides. He said he thought he had been at home every day for the past week.
And, just like that, we were back to reality.
My dad probably won’t remember any parts of our vacation together. E shaking his head every time my dad picked up the soccer ball with his hands instead of kicking it back; S chasing my dad in circles in the hotel courtyard; my dad sitting and creating his own glass sculpture at the Corning Museum of Glass;2 even the reference he made on his own about my mother “catching flies;” it all seems to have slipped through the cracks in his mind. But I know that the memories of the five days we spent together, fleeting as they were, will stay with my family and me for the rest of our lives.
Thank you, Toyota, for giving us these memories.
1. Don’t worry, I got him with the tissues at a different point in the trip.↩
2. Aaron will write more about this in a future post.↩
