The time between two parents feels like a liminal space
February 25, 2022 | Story and audio by Sara Lindsay | Illustration by Dominica Rose Davis
Author Sara Lindsay reads this essay.
Some highway rest stops are worse than others. There’s a definite hierarchy. The Thomas Edison Service Area is one of the best in New Jersey. The James Fenimore one is pretty bad, but it’s not nearly as heinous as the Horse Canyon View Area rest stop in Utah.
That place is a special Hell. It literally only has toilets. You can’t wash your hands if you want to and trust me — you want to. When I stopped there in the summer of 2021, there was a little boy in cowboy boots and a baseball hat, chatting with a man waiting in line to use one of the two nightmarish stalls.
The little boy couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. He wore Wrangler jeans that only a dad would wear and spoke with a Southern drawl as he talked about his sister in college. He spoke with such confidence and maturity, he might as well have been discussing a 401K. I felt sure I was watching a Freaky Friday situation play out, no doubt a horrible spell cast upon this child at America’s Worst Rest Stop.
Then there are gas station/rest stop combos. Most of them are OK, but none of them are preferable over a Love’s. Love’s are the best by far. They have showers and all sorts of food neatly laid out for truckers — who might be the only people to appreciate a rest stop taquito as much as I do.
And then there are the places that aren’t really stops. You just make them work.
These types of places choose you. You can pretend you meant to end up there, but you didn’t, and now you’re making do. I’m very familiar with these stops; specifically, the Wendy’s off Route 287 in South Jersey.
Why did I spend so much time at this Wendy’s? Well, my parents split when I was a baby. And I know: Everyone’s parents are divorced. You’re kind of the odd-one-out if your parents are still married today. But my parents? My parents hated each other way before it was cool.
It’s 2001, and my parents are fighting in this Wendy’s parking lot. They have split custody of me, and they pass me off like a baton just off exit 5. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the half-way point. I’m sure if finding another option meant spending an extra 10 minutes on the phone together, they’d rather meet at this Wendy’s for the next 18 years.
They’re arguing. It’s awkward. I’m sitting in the car. It’s awkward.
Maybe it’s an oversight or maybe it’s guilt, but my mom buys me a chocolate frosty. I’m lactose intolerant, but she buys me one anyway. (It’s guilt.)
Every weekend, I spend about eight hours in the car. Twice every weekend, my destination is this Wendy’s by the bridge with the big metal cage around it. I’m in the back seat, listening to early 2000s hits on the radio, feeling overly emotional about the parental trade-off. But we make it work. I bring stuffed animals. I’m always carsick. I get tired and laugh my head off at my Dad’s “Ren and Stimpy” impression. My mom and I sing along to Fleetwood Mac.
After so many years, my parents decide that half a state between them isn’t enough, and the 104.7 miles that separated them becomes more than 1,200.
My dad moves to Florida and my time in the back seat becomes four hours of driving and three hours on a plane. I go from traveling every weekend to doing so once a year. I would do it every weekend if I could, but an 11-year-old can’t rack up frequent flier miles, so it would be a waste.
When you’re young and you fly on a plane, your parents can pay for an “unaccompanied minor” ticket upgrade. This is also awkward. If you’re a child of divorce, you know pretty well that you grow up quicker than the weirdos whose parents are married. You use words like “pragmatic” and “child support” and ask odd questions like “What do you mean you don’t have a designated family Wendy’s?”
So, when the flight attendant is trying to bring you coloring books and talk with you about school, it’s a little uncomfortable. Doesn’t she know my childhood died a long, long time ago? I’m the eldest daughter. I should be helping her. The “unaccompanied minor” tickets stop soon after they start.
Sara started flying between New Jersey and Florida to visit family at less than a year old. She never stopped. Now she’s 26, and she has flown close to 200 times. (Photo courtesy of Sara Lindsay)
Eventually, I begin navigating airports on my own, teary-eyed and carrying a stuffed animal. I get pretty good at it. I know Newark airport like the back of my hand. Tampa, Sarasota, Fort Myers, Orlando — I’ve got those down, too. By the time I’m 18, I have flown on more than 100 planes.
The time between parents feels like a weird, liminal space.
A gray area.
I am my mom’s and my dad’s and no one’s all at once. I’m just another person pulling an overstuffed bag through a crowded airport. Businessmen walk by, talking too loudly on the phone. People are sleeping in the terminal. A little girl is dragging her “Dora the Explorer” backpack on the ground.
There are separate phone calls with my mom and my dad. My bag is checked, and then I’m alone again. And it feels like I’m sitting in the back seat of the car, on my way to Wendy’s. But I’m on a plane, on my way home, wherever that is today.
Throughout my childhood, I have a recurring dream in which I’m in the back seat of an unfamiliar car. It’s moving fast, and there’s no one driving. I’m scrambling, clawing to get to the front seat, but I usually can’t get there before I’m woken up by the collision. If I can get up there, I can’t drive. I don’t know how.
As an adult, I know this dream is not about driving — it’s about control. And of course I would have this cliché dream, being the kid in back seats and airports and liminal spaces.
I’m the kid who exists in the gray area.
From “tell your father I haven’t gotten a check this month” and “the thing about your mother is…”
I don’t quite belong to any one place. I don’t even know how to tell someone where I live, because it deserves more than one answer. Every decision is complicated, nuanced and laced with guilt. I don’t want to choose who to spend my birthday or Christmas with, who I’ll live near. I want things to be simple. But almost nothing is black and white. It’s all muddied, blurred, gray.
And that messy, pressurized, emotional in-between has made me who I am.
I’ve come to terms with being the Wendy’s kid — the Infamous Airport Cryer.
I thrive in the gray area.
Forged by nuance, I find myself seeking it out. I can handle long road trips and crowded airports and weird, sinkless rest stops with 40-year-old children. I take nothing for granted, and I know that if a loved one is nearby, seeing them is always worth the drive.
I choose where the road trips begin and end now, and the view is a lot nicer from behind the wheel.