escritora

I am staring out the window at the landscapes rolling by. The light is golden and warm, casting the fields and farmhouses in an orange glow. It is morning, around 11 AM. I am sitting at the table in our family's 1970's motorhome, tenderly nicknamed the Aristocrap.

The beige exterior is adorned with the brown and orange lines, typical of the times. By the times, I am referring to around 30 years prior to the journey we are currently taking. In its prime, the Aristocrat may have been a luxury. A vehicle proud families drove to campsites, wearing whatever was in fashion. I imagine that they smiled like the people in all the ads from that decade. The mother wearing a pattern dress, the son in a bright red baseball cap.

Now in the 2000s, our motorhome is usually the most run down at the campground. We tend not to tempt fate by journeying too far from home. We stay in places like Elk Island, Alberta Beach or Pigeon Lake, where a tow home wouldn't cost a fortune.

My parents are sitting in the cab. My father is driving, my mother is in the passenger seat. Are they bickering? They so often do on these types of trips. My sister, her young, innocent soul, is sitting across the table from me reading. So pure and untainted. Her ivory skin covered in freckles from the sun. She is reading a fantasy book. The Hunger Games, I think. There is a streak of sun coming through the window heating the space between us. Soft Portuguese blankets and textured Mexican ones are spilling out of the compartment above the cab where my parents sleeps, having been hastily stuffed inside.

My beloved feather pillow is beside me. The familiar odour is an odd obsession of mine. I am soothed and comforted by the smell of my bedroom. I, a 13 year old girl, have been told that I am too old to still be compulsively smelling it and fondling it in my hands. I even go as far as stuffing the feathers that have escaped back into the holes that have formed in all four corners. I feel like I can't be without it, especially at night. If a friends spontaneously asks if I want to sleep over, I say that I can't because I don't have my pillow. What is this attachment to home? Where does it come from?

The kitchen and bathroom are inoperative and emit an unpleasant, musty odour. The motorhome is essentially a few beds and shelter. All the cooking is done on a camping stove or on the fire outside and we use the outhouses or campground bathrooms. It's almost the same as camping in a tent, without being soaked when it rains.

We usually eat delicious meals, my dad being unable to go a week without a steak always cooks elaborate dinners. We eat freshly caught fish cooked in garlic and butter and thick, juicy hamburgers with all the toppings, including caramelized onions. We eat donuts and danishes for breakfast on picnic benches.

I feel completely and utterly comfortable on these trips. I am young and untainted by the tumultuousness and dirty-making of teenagehood. I am going to sit by fire. I am going to bury my feet in the pebbly sand. I am going to swim in an unromantic body of water, 40 minutes or so out of my hometown. I will sleep on the folded-down table in the motorhome. I might make my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night under the moon, completely unaware that these will be the last unburdened and sinless days of my life.