We gambled and lost everything we didn't need

After nearly two years on the road, we arrive a different family -- splintered but revived.

By Kate Convissor

Dec 13, 2002 | We hitch the truck to the trailer as we have done a hundred times before. The deep-throated growl of our Ford diesel is familiar and comforting, like toast and oatmeal. We scramble into our accustomed seats: Mom and Pop in front, kids and dog in back.

But today we aren't following some whimsical line on a map. We won't crawl up a mountain pass or wind along a coastal road. We won't inch across an ocean of sand and mesquite. Today we aren't hiking to an alpine meadow as radiantly green as newborn creation. We won't lie under the eternal Texas sky while the Leonid meteors shower above us.

Today I won't barter at a bustling Mexican market in my fractured Spanish or join an exuberant circle of Cajun dancers with my clumsy two-step. Today we are only traveling 30 miles, and it will be our last trip together. Thirty more miles, and everything will change.

The truck rumbles expectantly. The dog pants with excitement. We look at each other, grinning. "Let's keep going," we all say, like kids skipping school.

But we can't. For the first time in almost two years, obligation lies ahead -- mortgages and taxes and utility bills. We have houses and keys to open them with. We have lawns to mow and windows to wash. We are not sure we want any of it.

Spring arrived late in Michigan, but I had insisted on arriving punctually. My early-bird strategy was to be first in line to choose among houses newly sprouted for the springtime market. What we got instead was freezing weather and winter's leftovers. So we rooted and snuffled among the "handyman specials" -- houses with walls that rippled like potato chips; houses with dreadlocks of exposed wires and rusty pipes; houses with crawl spaces through which small rivers flowed. Within six weeks, however, my husband and I had each found a house, and we prepared to start our separate lives.

I could not have foreseen this ending to our adventures, not exactly. When we left I only knew that without some change, some sign, some new direction, I would not return to the marriage in which we had struggled so relentlessly for the past baker's dozen years. Once, long before, in one of our endless counseling sessions, the therapist had asked, "What do you want for your marriage?" While my husband talked of travel and grandchildren, I suddenly knew with utter clarity that the only thing I wanted was to live in peace. Only peace. At the time I might as well have asked for the crown jewels.

But after months on the road, cradled in God's own earth, with time stretching ahead as broad as Nevada, I felt tender green shoots sprout tentatively from a dry stump. They felt a lot like peace. I knew that, much as I cared for the man, peace would not be found in the marriage. The odd and miraculous thing was that the trip not only made that clear, but also made it possible for us to part with some level of decency and even, sometimes, with compassion. To break a vow and end a marriage is a failure and a sorrow. I felt it was the right decision then, and I still do.

Now, six months after those last 30 miles, I live in a town with a Main Street two blocks long. It has three variety stores, a two-seat barbershop, and a hometown grocery that has survived the Wal-Mart kiss of death. Real church bells toll three times a day, and an army of kids tumbles onto the streets for Halloween.

This town is vintage America. I know because I have seen her sisters in Choteau, Mont., and Castroville, Texas, in Bardstown, Tenn., and Pioche, Nev. These are towns with cracked sidewalks, meandering property lines and houses that are known by the name of the family who used to live there. Mine is Grandma Urka's house. My husband lives around the corner, and our kids go easily back and forth.

Next Page: There was no dark side to this adventure

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