Travel

In 2006 we had a dream. It was simple enough: Sell our house and fund a yearlong trip around the country to visit the national parks. Reality supplanted the dream in April of 2006, as a turn of the ignition key ended an over decade-long stay in Phoenix and opened up the unknown. Traveling with our two-year-old son, Justin, we looked ahead to our clockwise journey around the U.S. as our old lives faded in the mirror.

But five days into the trip, something happened. Something I was certain would not happen: I found out I was pregnant. With no jobs, no home, and no maternity coverage, I convinced my husband we should continue our road trip anyway. During our time on the road, we survived battles with the elements, with animals, and with each other. We agonized over prenatal care and how to find it. We sustained rejection. We hiked. We climbed. We potty-trained Justin. And we endured marital disunity. Yet none of us killed the others. We still lived the dream.

In December of that year, we stopped in Florida to have the baby. Nothing had prepared us for the nightmare to follow. In early labor and already in trouble, the doctors sliced me open in an emergency C-section that pitted doctor against baby in a tug-of-war for freedom. Zane, despite being born full-term and exactly on his due date, weighed only 3 pounds, 14 ounces. He wasn’t doing well. The nurse held him up briefly for us to see, then hurried away with a team of specialists to intensive care.

Fighting for his life and with an array of physical defects, his first few days were frightening. On the fifth day of his new life, we found out the devastating news that would alter our lives forever. Zane was born with Trisomy 18, the chromosomal condition that kills most babies in the first week. The doctor told us he would die. We watched as Zane tenuously clung to life, plugged in to oxygen and monitors. We signed a Do Not Resuscitate order, visited the hospital chaplain, and held Zane as much as we could. We waited for him to die.

The odds were against Zane living for more than a week, but since he didn’t know any better, he just kept on living. After 17 days in intensive care, he no longer needed to be there. He was breathing on his own, he was no longer hooked to alarms and monitors; and even though he had to eat through a feeding tube, he was slowly gaining weight, so we took him back on the road with us, planning to end the trip if he didn’t do well or failed to survive.

This is the story of my travel memoir, Our Life on the Road, which is still looking for the right publishing home. We also have a website at www.ourlifeontheroad.com.