Fast-forward to December 5, 2023, and what you’ll read below popped into my inbox.

It made me cry.

Not ashamed to admit it.

I realize it sounds so awful to say, so selfish and needy, but this was what I hoped to read. I had hoped that she understood how different and unique this father-daughter shared time was and I had hoped that it would be something she’d always look back on and reflect and smile about, long after I’m gone.

I think maybe time helped with the reflection.

I still feel guilty about basically tormenting her into writing something to end this book with, but by the same token, I’m so glad I did.

Here’s what she wrote:   

When I think about the cross-country trip with my dad, I think about the view from a parking lot that looks over a wide canyon, humbled by the sheer quantity of space and earth and sky. I think of the two worlds that I was wedged between.

One I was leaving behind; my studies, my friends, everything I’d built in the last four years in Burlington. And the other was nascent, just visible, a pinpoint in the long stretch of sky. Something I couldn’t fully imagine yet.

I’d decided to move to Almería, Spain after spending four earth-shattering months there two years before. 

I couldn’t have imagined then that such a decision would shift the trajectory of my life. What I did imagine was a detour, another couple of freewheeling years in Europe before I laid my head down stateside, found some job in Santa Fe, bought a new-old shitty car to shuttle me from gig to gig. I couldn’t have known then what the trip would really signify in the coming years. 

Looking at it now, as though it were a mountain in the rear view, I see its majesty. The beauty of a father and daughter, thirty years apart, setting off with the intention of traversing something like 5,000 miles, pit-stopping in any city that would have me sing.

What it really was, was a long goodbye to our years of living under one roof.

My dad and I have always had some current that runs between us, unspoken, but there.

We share a lot of common traits and habits, and of course a physical resemblance that family members would never fail to comment on when I was young, to my chagrin.

“Big blue eyes, just like your father.” 

Something about that particular combination—the flesh and blood, the shared experiences—has bound us inextricably throughout the years. 

With a look, he knows how I’m feeling. The same goes for him. I’m sure this isn’t a revelation, more a common miracle among like-minded people.

So, I could sense that the prospect of me crossing an ocean to live 3,673 miles away weighed somewhat heavily on him, and probably still does.

Shortly after making that decision, I told him about my plans to cross the country alone in my little Camry. I thought I’d stay with friends along the way, play as many gigs as I could, and relax in California with my friend Zach once I’d finished the job. I imagined myself writing the last pages of my chapter in Burlington, and gearing up for the plots that were sure to unravel once I got settled in Spain. 

Understandably, he had some reservations.

The truth is, I don’t know shit about cars. Enough to drive, of course, and enough to pump gas and pop the hood for someone else to inspect the innards. But if my dashboard were to light up like a Christmas tree, there would exist only one viable option: call Triple A.

I’m sure my dad feared that phone call that I’d make immediately after (or maybe before?) calling Triple A, crying on a highway because the car had withered into an immobile block of metal, and I had absolutely no idea how to revive it.

I imagine he was reminiscing about the bald tire incident, when I pulled over in a rest stop panicking because my flat tire was literally burning off against the pavement as I drove myself and a friend to Montreal. Somehow, I failed to notice until we smelled the smoke. 

Obviously, my track record did not lend confidence to my ability to successfully complete the road trip, and it’s true that I shared these fears. But, in spite of them, I was convinced I could pull it off. 

So, when my dad—offhandedly, timidly, almost jokingly—pitched the idea of him joining me on the trip, I bristled a little at first. I felt the weight of his doubts and was a bit wounded by his lack of faith. I told him I’d have to think about it and would get back to him.

Over the next few days, I tried to really visualize the experience of the trip with my dad in the driver’s seat. It took on a new quality. In this reality, I lost the luxury of absolute control—something I have spent my whole life grasping at in different ways. 

I would have to cooperate, take his needs into account, and spend the days making each decision with him in mind, from meals and accommodations to routes and stops. Part of the reason I had wanted to go alone was to test myself and my autonomy. In this reality, I’d be giving that up.

Still, the more I thought about it, the more I felt a whisper of intuition urging me to accept his offer. 

Of course, the financial gains were not to be undervalued. But that wasn’t the root of it—I felt safer imagining his presence. I smiled thinking about the jokes we’d share for years to come.

When I told him the news, I felt his grin through the phone like static. I knew I’d made the right choice. 

Over the next several months, I sent email after email to restaurants, bars and pubs across the country that had a reputation for live music. I designed a slipshod tour poster on Canva and released my first EP, ‘Dust,’ with the help of a producer friend and his frat house home studio.

Of the dozens of establishments I made contact with, six of them responded favorably enough to set a date, and the Dust Tour was born. 

It was a humble beginning to a music career I couldn’t fully visualize. In spite of my doubts, I felt lifted by the reaffirmation of one of the few things that kept proving itself to be true, ever since childhood—that dogged persistence and tedious, unglamorous work could, with a little luck, lead some version of what you were hoping for to bloom into reality. 

We celebrated my graduation from the University of Vermont on May 19, 2019, and I moved back to my parents’ house to prepare for the trip. I meticulously crossed each item off my list and checked and rechecked the confirmation emails from each venue. I don’t think either of us slept much the night before heading out.

What I remember most from the road is the soundtrack we played constantly, interrupted only by the odd audiobook.

I had made a playlist before we left, attempting to harvest as many songs as I could from all of those groups that we mutually love, while sprinkling in a few newer acts that Dad surely wouldn’t know, but might enjoy. 

I was really into Kurt Vile and Big Thief at the time, and wanted to see if he could connect with some songs that veered outside of his classic rock wheelhouse. 

There was the Grateful Dead, naturally; they were arguably my dad’s favorite band and a childhood favorite of mine, though the long, meandering solos had alienated themselves a bit from my playlists in recent years. 

The Beatles, which always reminded me of afternoons after elementary and middle school, when I would slide the greatest hits record from 1967-1970 out of its blue sleeve and listen to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘A Day in the Life’ while I ate my granola bar or peanut butter sandwich.

Bob Dylan, an idol to both of us, though not so much the folky, wide-eyed Dylan of his early albums as the lovelorn, synth-bathed Dylan of the later years. We both loved ‘Tight Connection to My Heart,’ even as Empire Burlesque was mocked by our friends.

Dire Straits and Fleetwood Mac, two of Mom’s favorite bands. 

The Who, The Smiths, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, The Kinks, Jackson Browne, The Doors, The Cure, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger. The classics.

I even threw on an Elliott Smith tune, my all-time number one artist, in all his threadbare, heartbreaking glory—knowing that Dad would look over midway through asking in a voice just a touch gentler than a mutter, “what’s this one?”

But a soundtrack is nothing without its corresponding images, and the changing landscape is also engraved in my memory, like a long scroll being rolled out slowly, revealing the curves of the nation.

There’s a lot I don’t remember about this trip. The days blend together. The nights melt into one long, starry flashback. The faces I was sure I’d never forget swirl into one another with the easy erasure of a watercolor painting. But, of course there are fragments I still hold on to. 

I think of the hungover mornings in the passenger seat, knees tucked against my chest, gulping air through the open window, a plastic bag resting at my feet, just in case. Dad looking over sympathetically, offering to pull over. 

I think of our eyes widening with those first few steps into a new town, or a new city, or an impossibly vast space lighting up the windshield like a movie.

I remember walking through the streets of Santa Fe, all terra cotta and bursts of desert flowers and musical Spanish hanging in the air like fruit on a tree, and thinking that I could see myself living there, just another one of the people ambling easily down the street, unhurried.

I remember the cloak of invisibility in Nashville. I remember playing as loudly as I could to deaf ears without the lift of a microphone or an amp, inane tears threatening to spill, hating my eyes and ego for betraying me. 

I remember the sweetness of the praises sung two nights later in Amarillo from a group of bikers that struck fear into me at first glance. I remember feeling guilty for my assumptions, then feeling buoyed by their unexpected kindness and gentleness.

There were moments of euphoria awash in moonshine and long, heavy silences in the front seat. 

There were conversations that transcended the restraints of the classical roles of father and daughter; conversations about life, what we knew and what we wondered about. 

Regardless of the circumstances, my dad was always around, ready to flash a goofy smile or fire a one-liner to try to make me laugh. It usually worked. 

I think that’s the thing I miss most about living in the States—the ease of connection with my family. The simple proximity.

In the four years since we crossed the country, the pieces of my previous life have been blown to bits and reconstructed. I hold it with me, always, but my day-to-day existence bears little resemblance to my past. 

I might have stuck with the old blueprints, too, if it weren’t for the matter of love.

My husband, Miguel, in moments of ruminating on the past, sometimes brings up the idea that time is elastic—as we age, the percentage of our life that a year constitutes grows ever smaller. 

When we’re seven, a year is a seventh of our life, a whole 14.3 percent, but when we’re twenty-seven, it’s just a small fraction of the experiences we’ve passed through. As we grow older, years get shorter, and even the most formative experiences feel far away, like a super yacht on the horizon made out to be a minute fishing boat.

Now, even those first fumbling years in Spain feel far away, and I am no longer awed by my ability to get on in a foreign country. Rather, I am awed by the ease of melting into it.

I miss home all the time. I miss ordering bagels at the breakfast restaurant I worked at in high school, and ice-cold water that you don’t have to pay for. I miss wide sidewalks that aren’t dotted with dog shit, and ample parking, and tall trees that color the seasons and let you know time is passing.

But there’s so much I love about my life abroad (read: health care, excellent cheap wine, midday rests, balmy weather). Most importantly, the love that planted these roots and has continued to nourish them every day. I love my little family of two. 

To me, this does not cheapen the ties that I have with my mother, my father and my sister. Those ties are like the sinewy tendons that move my body—ingrained, intrinsic, irreplaceable. At times, the sheer distance between us makes me worry that they don’t know that. As much as I repeat the words, written or through a screen, I worry that the screen itself dilutes them. 

More than anything, I worry the life path I’m choosing is inherently painful for them, holding almost an inverse relationship to the pleasure it brings me. 

All I can do is try my best to convey these convictions to them in the times I’m away and suck the marrow from the moments I share with them at home. 

I think that’s why the trip was so beautiful, looking back. We knew the sands in the hourglass were falling one by one, and that it would never be refilled to its original capacity. The easy, humdrum days of cohabitation were numbered, and we were going to squeeze out every last drop.

My dad has always been my role model and the person whose approval I craved most. I’m so grateful for those 22 days on the road with him, where we proved to each other that our relationship was unbound by time or place and would always persist in the face of adversity. 

I hope these words can act as a morning coffee, or a drink on the porch, or a song sung loudly in the car during the months of my absence. I hope he knows just how much love my heart holds for him.