Happy Mother's Day, the pandemic edition

There's an enduring Caldwell family memory from 1987, the year we moved to California.

We lived in Bakersfield. "It's centrally located!" my father would say, perhaps trying to sell it to himself as much as to us. And as it was so convenient, the Caldwells would spend weekend days in the Toyota minivan, getting to know our new home.

We could drive to L.A. or the Central Coast in 90 minutes, sometimes less. It was five hours to San Francisco or the U.S.-Mexico border.

Totally doable, in my dad's mind, was to be in the Bay Area for brunch, walk around until dinnertime, and be home by late bedtime. Sometimes, we'd do it again the next morning. Or maybe I'm making that up. It's been awhile ... but that seems likely.

On a trip to San Diego one day, Patrick, Kimberly and I fought the entire way. My father blasted Zig Ziglar on the cassette deck, turning up the volume when we whined or asked how much longer or yelled about someone touching us. My mother waved and whacked her wooden spoon, only ever smacking the Good News Bible she'd stolen from St. Bartholomew's in Corpus Christi, Texas, and which would grace the back seat of the van until it finally was pushed to the junk yard near Fresno nearly 200,000 miles later.

There is a photo from that San Diego trek of us three children in a Balboa Park parking lot. We'd just arrived and are standing outside of the maroon van, all with our arms crossed across our bodies, all scowling. I am wearing a yellow shirt. My sister's hair is baby-white. My brother sneers.

Here's the part now sweet with 30-plus years of perspective: Seconds after that moment was preserved on film, my parents told us to get back in the van, and we drove home, through San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, over the Grapevine and into the driveway on Kennedy Avenue.

We never set foot in the World Famous San Diego Zoo. And we never forgot it. My folks tamed savageness with savageness and won.

Much respect, Mom and Dad.

I tried to re-create the photo in the zoo parking lot when Blake and Dylan and I were in San Diego in February. Just that little project to try to make Nana and Baba laugh was such a cluster of foolishness that I, too, almost packed up and drove away (in my fantasy, though, I left the children behind).

Yes, today is Mother's Day, and the truth is that the savages are winning most days around here.

But I'm so grateful for that trip to a water polo tourney across the country at the end of February. We landed home just days into a new world and a different and much more difficult time. It's hard to know when we or any other family will get another chance to create bad yet treasured memories, so I'm glad we got our shot.

Happy Mother's Day from these savages.