Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go! My dad knows the way to fix the sleigh, when the radiator decides to blow, OH!
When I was a kid, my favorite part of the holiday season was the road trips. We have family all over northern New York and Canada, and my parents were adamant about keeping us connected. Several times a year, they would pack us up, throw us in the van, and take us on an adventure. The holidays were no exception, and not even cold temperatures and snow-covered roads could stop us.
Road trips were guaranteed to be an adventure because our trusty old Chevy conversion van had a wonky radiator and a penchant for overheating, which meant traveling in the summer heat was a challenge. But winter was not free from problems, either. In addition to the radiator issues, the van was aging, and it was NOT going gently into the night. Sometimes a wiper would seize up, or the muffler would come loose; the van constantly demanded my dad’s skills as Mr. Fix-It.
But, with total trust in dad’s mechanical skills, we went full speed ahead at the holidays. We took so many winter trips that they all blend into one another in my mind’s eye. The trips that stand out are the ones where other people joined us in our traveling van hotel. It was like having a guest star pop in to shake up your favorite sitcom. One memorable year, my aunt Paula and cousin Heather hitched a ride with us on Thanksgiving so we could all make the four-hour drive back to our grandparents’ homestead together.
(Our mom often travels separately with another of her sisters. I can just imagine the two of them, temporarily sprung from the burdens of domestic responsibilities, gossiping and giggling the way sisters do whenever they get sacred one-on-one time. As full-blown adults, my own sister and I often take road trips, just the two of us, and it’s my favorite thing to do. Nothing unleashes one’s inner goofball like the golden equation of the road: Two sisters plus one car equals: JACKASSES ASSEMBLE.)
On our trip north that Thanksgiving, like clockwork, something went wrong with the van, and we had to stop so my dad could crawl underneath it. Mid-winter, on the side of some nondescript, desolate country road, he tried to patch everything together. I was young, so I can’t remember if it was the time the van overheated and he had to do Radiator Fluid Things or if it was the time there was a breach in the exhaust system and he fashioned a muffler sling out of a wire hanger. Whatever it was, we never doubted his abilities. We all sort of took it for granted that Dad has it handled; it might take an hour longer than expected, but there was never a fear that we wouldn’t make it. We knew we wouldn’t miss out on seeing all our cousins or on the stuffing, the pumpkin pies, the fresh dinner rolls, or—the marquee dish—Gram’s homemade cinnamon buns.
And so, as we sat and waited there in the cold van under the grey obscura of winter’s evening lens, Aunt Paula kept the kids busy by singing some Christmas Carols of Distraction. We ran through some of the standards: “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” before we inevitably got to the classic “Ode to the Holiday Road Trip.” Aunt Paula started us off: “Over the river and through the woods,” and we all joined in, “to Grandmother’s house we go!” I remember singing those words and feeling them resonate; I thought about how long, cold road trips to Grandma’s during the holiday season must be one of those universal experiences that transcends time, social status, and age.
Looking back, I can only imagine my dad’s muted misery as he is forced once again to battle our van, the cold and dark closing in all around him as he runs triage on the undercarriage. The frustration floating under the van was matched only by the excitement bubbling within it. Our family’s flirtation with adventure was Dad’s chore list. But it is a treasured memory all the same.
It’s so easy to be Grinchy during the holidays. They’re full of painstaking, endless chores: the lists, the buying, the crowds. The task of gift giving: the tedium of wrapping and the anxiety over disappointing someone with your shoddy choice. Travel, traffic, and delayed flights. Greed and materialistic behavior. The back aches from baking a platter’s worth of flinging, flanging Christmas cookies. Mall Santa Claus, who smells inexplicably like beef jerky AND the inside of moldy hockey equipment. That annoying way the scotch tape always gets tangled around itself, or how actual Scotch makes you hungover.
So, we must pay attention to the nuance. When you hear someone yell, “Stay out of that bedroom; I haven’t wrapped your present yet,” what you are really hearing is, “I love you and I want you to be surprised.” When someone is berating you for wrapping presents with the precision of a blind T-Rex, they’re really saying, “Make it perfect, love means perfect seams!”
Love is when your aunt diffuses a tense car ride with a Christmas carol sing-along. Love is when your dad turns a random accessory into an improvised mechanical godsend. Life is rushed; finding these pockets of grace is hard work. But doing that work is love. Hidden in these details is love. Searching for these details is exhaustion. That exhaustion is love.
And, unlike so many things in the modern world, love will travel any road.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2026 issue of (585).
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