Jan Morrill

This morning while Steve and I were walking Obi, he noticed a car in a neighbor’s driveway with a California tag.

“They sure came a long way,” he said.

Immediately, memories started pouring through my mind as I replied, “We used to make that trip every couple of years from California. We came to Kentucky to visit my grandparents, then we drove up to Ohio to visit my Uncle Randy and Auntie Sue.”

Obi stopped to “do his business.” As Steve stooped, green poop bag in-hand, he said, “You drove all that way? With five kids?”

“Yep,” I replied, once again in awe of my father’s patience during those trips. “We made several trips in a station wagon, then later in a Condor motor home.” (The pictures below are not mine, but these photos are identical to what our station wagon and Condor looked like.)

I’ve written about my dad’s patience on those trips in a story called “Planet Condor.” I’ll share it below. What I’ve often thought about, but have never written about, is all the preparation my mom did before these trips.

I started to feel a little guilty that I’ve never outwardly recognized the Herculean efforts it must have taken to get five kids, a dog, and my dad ready for a cross-country trip. I’m pretty sure that’s why she often had a migraine in the first days of the trips.

One-by-one, memories of my mom’s pre-trip prep work popped into my mind.

Back to my mom’s ingenuity. Before packaged hand wipes or hand sanitizer existed, Mom made her own. During her pre-trip preparations, she’d cut Handi Wipes into small sheets, soak them in Sea Breeze, and pack them into Tupperware containers to be placed in the ice chest.

These cool wipes were not only good for cleaning pork-chop-smeared-fingers, they were excellent wipes to cool us when the temperatures soared on summer trips. Perhaps most importantly, when my dad began to show signs of getting sleepy (opening the window, shaking his head, or starting to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat — yes, he’d demand we sing with him) my mom would pull one out of the ice chest and insist he wipe it over his face and neck. The coolness on his skin and invigorating scent must have been a good pick-me-up! (Even though he still insisted we sing along with him.)

Mom used to like to dress us all alike. She often sewed dresses for the four girls and bought a matching outfit for my brother, the youngest. I fondly remember one traveling outfit she made for my sisters and me — hand-sewn summer dresses made of bright orange and pink parachute-type material. Each night in the hotel, she would wash these dresses in the bathroom sink and they’d be dry by morning. My brother wore an orange polo shirt and khaki shorts. I don’t remember what my parents wore, but knowing my mother, they were coordinated, too. I wish I could find a photo of us in those outfits, but for now, the photos below give you an idea of how well-coordinated we were!

As with many memoirs, much of my memoir revolves around my mom’s and my relationship. At times, particularly during my childhood and teen years, our relationship was rocky, and I often wonder if I’ll ever have the courage to have the story published. As with the story, Planet Condor, below, much of my memoir is written from the point of view of a child or teenage, who has little understanding or even compassion for the challenges my mom must have gone through. But know that I loved my mom, and would not want anyone to think otherwise.

With any writing I do, whether fiction or non-fiction, I always put myself into my characters’ shoes. It’s a necessity for a writer who wants to create characters with whom readers can identify.

Putting myself in the shoes of the characters in The Red Kimono and its sequel, Shadow of the White Chrysanthemum (Spring 2027 release date, University of Arkansas Press), helped me to understand how being an internee as a child must have affected my mom throughout her life, and therefore, how it affected me and my other siblings.

Now, as I am working on my memoir, I put myself in the shoes of my mom. I have begun to understand her better, to see the challenges of raising 5 children, often on her own while my father was on trips for the Air Force, all while dealing with the lingering after effects of internment.

So, whether the story is ever published or not, writing it has been beneficial. I better understand my mother, and therefore, I better understand myself.

“You know,” I said to Steve as we continued our walk and conversation. “My mom was a smart and creative woman.”

It felt good to recollect everything my mom did to prepare for our family trips. They have given me some of my happiest memories.

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Planet Condor

In the summer of 1972, my four siblings and I stood like sentries in our driveway, waiting for our father to arrive in our new motor home—a 1971 Ford Condor.   In my little girl impatient world, he seemed to take forever, but finally, FINALLY, the corrugated white box on wheels turned the corner, our goliath chariot.  The five of us jumped up and down in unsynchronized delight, clapping our hands and squealing with anticipation.

When Dad pulled into the driveway, I beamed with pride.  Surely we were the first in the neighborhood to have a motor home.

He stopped the engine and poked his head through the window.  “All aboard!”

We burst through the entryway to a chorus of “oohs” and “ahhs” for the interior’s olive green plaid upholstery and dark wood-paneling – that unmistakable look of the 1970’s.  But, it didn’t take long for that joyous chorus of excitement and awe to turn to shouts of staking claim to the myriad seats and beds.

“I get the seat by the window.”

“No way.  I got it first.”

“Top bunk is mine.”

“Uh-uh.  I claimed it first.  Mommy!” 

A week later, five eager kids, two wary adults and a newly-bathed dog piled into the Condor, and we each took the seats we’d won in battle.  Our first adventure was an 1800-mile trek from California to Kentucky to visit Grandma and Grandpa.

Halfway into the trip, Mom was attacked by one of her infamous migraines – headaches so bad they crippled her for days.  Her only solution was to pop a prescription pain killer cocktail after which she passed out in back of our house-on-wheels.

Dad dealt with it with his usual patience, half-escaped in a daydream as he drove the Condor eastward, humming You Are My Sunshine to stay awake.

We kids had our own ways of dealing.  Those headaches might have led to Mom passing out, but they were like a shot of adrenaline to the pack of five.

Like the day we came up with the brilliant idea to see if we could tip the Condor over while Dad drove along Route 66.  All five of us flung our bodies from port to starboard and back again, like wild electrons bouncing off the walls.  As we crushed back-and-forth with our combined weights, we caused a good jerk, but we never did tip it over.

Dad kept his nose to the steering wheel, apparently oblivious.  Mom, under the influence of a medically-induced nonchalance, didn’t seem to care either.  And their five children?  We were hardly sympathetic.

We were bored, bored, bored – not a good thing on Day Three of a five-day trip.  We rummaged through drawers, cabinets, and glove compartments for things to do, and found Mom’s nylon hosiery.  Pulling them over our heads, we looked like juvenile bank robbers.  In the closet, we found Mom’s Twiggy wigs and put them on.  The Fab Five – a bad imitation of the Beatles.

We looked odd, but not odd enough.

“Here’s some oranges,” my brother said, his head poked in the mini-fridge.  It was just the touch we needed – orange bug-eyes!  We stuffed them under the nylons and over our eyes, and voila!  An appearance to match our behavior – creatures from another planet.

When the time came to share our talents with fellow-travelers on adventure’s highway, we each took turns at the stern of the Condor, where our stage was a large square window to the outside world.  Our audience was any car “lucky” enough to drive behind us.  Each of us took our place atop the toilet and performed, bouncing our heads back and forth like bobble-heads from Planet Condor.  Our sides ached with laughter at each performance, while we mentally calculated how to outdo the previous act.

Dad kept driving, trying to distract us by encouraging a round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

Mom kept sleeping.

That night, as we settled into an RV Park in Oklahoma, lucidity began to return to our mom, though she remained hazy from the residual medication.  Trapped with her alien children in a now too-tiny box for three days, she was ready to leave Planet Condor.

Dad, however, suggested her night gown was probably not the appropriate attire for going out.  Alas, this was lost in translation.  She demanded he take her out to dinner or she’d walk home.

My youngest sister asked, “Daddy, isn’t it too far for Mommy to walk from Oklahoma to California?”

The next morning, the monster headache was gone, and Mom proceeded to pull travelling outfits she’d sewn for us out of the Condor’s tiny closet.  Dressed identically, we looked like the American version of the Von Trapp family singers when we arrived at Stuckey’s for breakfast.  By all appearances, we were the perfect family.  

Now that Mom was alert, we morphed from aliens to angels.  She expected and received perfect behavior.  After all, we each knew the wrath of her pinchy fingernails should get any ideas of returning to our alien forms.  No matter where we went, the lucky one sitting next to her was always the best-behaved.

After pancakes, scrambled eggs, a spilled orange juice and three trips to the restroom, we left the restaurant and prepared to hit the road again – two weary adults, followed by their five raring-to-go children.  There couldn’t be a more perfect-looking family on Earth.

But on Planet Condor, perfection didn’t exist.