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A few days earlier, JJ and I had been scrolling Zillow listings—single-story homes close to shopping and health care—as if the right floor plan in the right location could fix the future.

Now, rolling through the admission gate at Painted Desert National Park, I could still feel that conversation humming under my skin.

Dad’s energy to move was flagging while Mom’s resistance was rising. He can shoulder a lot before stepping in, but when he does, it’s decisive. He wasn’t there yet. Not even close.

What I felt on the road was what I felt at their house: throttle versus wind.

Ghosts of Route 66

When I stopped at the ranger station—as I always do—the man at the desk helped me plan my stops. I vaguely remember visiting the park when I was a girl and buying a striped red piece of petrified stone with a jump loop drilled through the top. I’d mounted it on my charm bracelet when I got back home. I wonder what became of it—maybe Mom tucked it away, the way she saved so many things, holding memory in objects as an anchor in time.

I inherited that same impulse. When we downsized from our house to a condo, I threw away preschool macaroni art and paper-plate handprints. It nearly broke me. I had to learn that memory can’t all live in objects. Some of it has to live in presence—the way you show up, the way you stay.

I didn’t want to miss the little strip of Route 66 that the park had preserved, and the ranger told me, “Look for the line of telephone poles that still marks the roadbed. Can’t miss it.”

Route 66 was officially struck from the U.S. Highway System in 1985, after decades of declining traffic and bypass construction that rendered it obsolete in function—but not in memory. We took it several times in the late ’60s and early ’70s, riding long days toward my dad’s side of the family in what’s now called the Inland Empire of California.

We got one shot at a motel on the trip west and another headed east, so we kids became discerning judges of our options. Cool neon signs helped us make the first cut, then we judged diving-board heights. If the pool had a slide too? “Pull over, Dad!”

If a motel had air conditioning, it would say so in big, bold signage, but the real prize awaited us indoors: Magic Fingers under the mattresses. Drop in a quarter and the whole bed vibrated like a carnival ride, making our voices sound like we were singing into a box fan. Too young to form our own theories about how others used the beds, we kids were convinced we were being pampered like movie stars.

Back then, Route 66 felt like a playground for the whole country—a line stretching from Chicago to LA, across time zones and regional AM radio signals, stitched together by local flavor. It wasn’t just a road—it was the trip.

By late morning, the whole region was under fire watch, and the wind at the Route 66 exhibit was so fierce I worried my bike might blow off its kickstand. I’m not kidding. A woman pulled alongside my bike in a minivan wearing a sun visor. She was so concerned about me she mouthed, You OK? I nodded from inside my helmet, though I wasn’t sure the movement even registered with all the buffeting. I added a thumbs-up to be sure.

Standing there at the Painted Desert, I-40 roaring a few miles off, I felt the difference in my bones. Route 66 was where you paused. I-40 is where you bypass. The interstate forced travelers to speed up, not slow down. It even trained the wildlife not to wander too close.

Maybe that’s why I started thinking about my own family’s shortcuts—the ways we sometimes rush past the moments that matter.

Carter’s kind of Wedding

I was eager for the next stop, at the Painted Desert Diner. I’d already burned off the powdered eggs and instant oatmeal from the Best Western. That’s when JJ had called.

“Tam, what’s this about Mom and Dad driving to North Carolina after Carter’s wedding? After? You’re okay with that?”

Carter, my 36-year-old eldest son, was getting married in a month. Courthouse steps, a simple lunch—no registry, no videographer, no expectations. Just show up. He’d said when invited my parents, It’s no big deal if you can’t come to the ceremony, but I want you to meet Katie.

It was the kind of phrasing I admire—not pushy, not needy, but gracious and clear. The emphasis wasn’t on him being celebrated. It was on Katie. On who she is, and how much she matters to him.

I don’t know where he learned that restraint; I certainly didn’t model it back when I was in the trenches raising him.

By the time Mom and Dad got his call, they already had other events on the calendar—the kind of invitations that had been preceded a year ago by a save-the-date postcard. Somehow, the simplicity of Carter and Katie’s nuptials scrambled the usual cultural signals.

JJ and I both saw the irony: if Carter and Katie had gone full production—matching outfits, drone footage, personalized hashtags—our parents would’ve cleared their calendars without hesitation.

I’ve long believed American wedding culture lost its mind, but that’s just me editorializing. The truth is, there is clarity in all that spectacle. People rise to the occasion. They book the flights, they buy the shoes, they smile for the camera.

JJ was determined to make things right. “If they don’t go,” he told me, “they’ll regret it the rest of their lives.”

His voice was measured, steady—like it gets when he’s trying to hold everyone’s future in place before something snaps.

I told him I agreed, but I wasn’t going to guilt-trip them. “They are taking Carter at his word—meeting Katie is more important than when they meet her.”

“Well, if this were Bebe’s wedding I’d be livid.”

He asked me not to roll out yet, to wait until he got to their house and put them on speakerphone. I don’t remember everything that was said—something about keeping promises. About how showing up matters more when no one demands it.

There wasn’t a lot of back-and-forth. No negotiation. Just a quiet pause, and then Dad said: “We’ll be there.”

That was it. Just a turn in the road—small at the moment, but it changed the map.

I pulled into the Painted Desert Diner, tucked between two sturdy RVs for windbreak. The diner is within the Painted Desert Visitor Center. Designed by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander as part of the Mission 66 initiative, the place has the vibe of a mid-century desert mirage—flat roofs, wide eaves, steel beams holding up the sky. Even the ketchup bottles seem architecturally placed.

Some visitor centers are beige and forgettable, but this one in turquoise and orange had a kind of quiet cool to it. Neutra wanted harmony with the landscape. Maybe that’s why I found a little of my own there

.

I’d just taken the top bun off my Hatch green chile cheeseburger when my phone buzzed.

It was Dad. Just checking in—where I was, how the weather was. Normal stuff.

His voice sounded lighter than it had earlier on speakerphone, but we didn’t talk about the wedding. That decision had already been made. Stare decisis—the matter was settled.

We slipped back into familiar rhythm, like rerouting onto the old road after a stretch of high-speed bypass. Slower, less direct. But known.

I’ve always admired the way he could step back once the decision was made, without rehashing or pressing. I had to learn that the hard way. But I did.

Eventually.

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