Dad came home towing a caravan. Couldn’t pass it up, he said. Any grumbles Mum kept to herself. At least it wasn’t half a butchered lamb and no freezer space. We watched her face soften as she reimagined the family future. A sunny one with road trips and spontaneous weekends away. 

Thing was, Dad had never towed before in his life and he was having trouble getting the van along the length of the driveway and into the carport. It had to be reversed in, any fool could see that, but with every inch he gained Dad lost a mile. After forty-five minutes Dad sent us kids inside. Said a man couldn’t do anything with an audience of underaged clowns. We didn’t care. The mozzies were out and watching him was getting boring anyway, and Mum was serving tea—sausages and chips and gravy. She kept a portion warming in the oven for Dad. Later, when we were in bed and the last of the neighbors had drifted back to their TV screens, we heard her putting it on a tray and taking it out to him.

Next morning when we left for school, we had to skirt around the nose of the car that was sticking well out into the street. Dad looked like he hadn’t had a wink, but he scraped together the energy to smile and wave us off before making a show of putting the car back into gear and scoping out the angles through the rear vision mirrors. After school, Dad was still at it, reversing then getting out of whack, jack-knifing and barely missing the fence. The letterbox had been an early casualty and Mum’s geraniums were flattened, but Dad seemed in reasonably good spirits. Nearly had her a moment there, he said as we loped past him through the gate, turning sideways to squeeze down the side of the house.

The caravan was a single axle Viscount Grand Tourer, five berths, front kitchen, complete with awning. White with blue trim that, over the years, faded from a perky sailboat cornflower to a dreary public school soap-grey. The years Dad spent in the car trying to back that van down into the carport were the years we spent growing up. He missed the parent-teacher interviews and the sports days and recitals. He missed me losing my front teeth but winning the tennis trophy. Our birthday parties and our graduations and the vocational counseling days. He missed John becoming a father and Sarah’s first tattoo. He missed Grandma’s funeral. He would have missed Rover’s but we buried her in the front yard, and Dad wound down the driver’s side window to deliver the eulogy.

None of us kids missed Dad. He was just like all the other dads. And Mum didn’t miss him. At least, that’s what she said. It took me going away to study for a year and returning to think maybe it was strange, Dad living in the driveway. But he was happy. Even as I paid the taxi driver and slung my overnight bag over my shoulder, I could see him beaming at me through the windscreen. 

Go on round the back, love, he called. Your mother’s got the kettle on. I’ll just get this little beauty in the carport, and I’ll be in for a cup of tea. Then what do you say we load her up and hit the road.

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Suzanne Verrall lives in Australia. She is the author of the poetry collection One Day I Will Go There (Vagabond Press, 2022). Her poetry, flash fiction and essays appear in various publications including Australian Poetry Journal, Southampton Review and The Interpreter’s House. For links to her work go to www.suzanneverrall.com