My Husband Planned Twelve Weeks in Our RV. I Wanted Two.

My husband circled twelve weeks on the calendar for our RV trip. I crossed out ten of them.

He looked at the calendar, then at me. “You’re kidding.”

I wasn’t. I wanted to go away with him. I didn’t want to leave in May and come back in August.

We’d had the RV for five years. Mostly used it for long weekends and one two-week trip that we’d both enjoyed. There were photographs. I was smiling in them. Ron kept referring to those photographs as if they settled what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I’m 66. He’s 68. He’d retired from his school maintenance job that winter. I’d stopped working in an office two years earlier, and I’d finally got used to having days that weren’t arranged around somebody else’s opening hours.

I had a pottery class on Wednesdays. A walking group on Mondays. Nothing you’d put in a travel brochure. I liked having people expect me somewhere.

Ron wanted a route west, time to stop wherever we liked, no rushing home because work started on Monday. He’d been drawing little lines on a map for months.

I’d looked at the map. Suggested a place to stop. Said the lake looked pretty. In his mind, I’d been planning twelve weeks with him. In mine, we’d been talking about possibilities.

When he laid out the calendar, it stopped being possibilities.

He asked what was keeping me home. I mentioned the class. He said I could do another class in the fall.

True. I could. I didn’t want to explain why a class I liked counted as part of a life I liked, but there I was, explaining it.

Then we started arguing about the RV itself. He loved it. I liked it for a while. After a while I wanted a kitchen where I didn’t have to move three things to make a sandwich.

He said he’d help more. That was kind, and it wasn’t the whole problem.

We hadn’t booked the long trip. We hadn’t paid for campsites. There was still time to talk. Neither of us sounded as though we thought talking would help.

Ron folded the map. “I don’t want another short trip and then another year of waiting,” he said. “How many good years do you think we’ve got?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I knew how many people we’d started losing touch with because they couldn’t travel anymore. So did he.

But I didn’t want fear of what might happen later deciding every month we had now.

He went out to the RV. I cleared the table and left the calendar where he’d put it. Those ten crossed-out weeks looked meaner once I wasn’t standing there defending them.

The next day he asked whether I’d try a longer trip before saying no to all of it. Four weeks, somewhere closer, with no heroic route to complete. We could see how we actually got along.

I agreed. I wasn’t secretly hoping it would be miserable. I packed things I liked, put a class on hold, and told my walking friends when I’d be back.

The first week was good. We stopped at a little museum we’d never have gone out of our way to visit. Ate sandwiches somewhere with a view. Ron was easier company without a departure time hanging over him.

I sent a picture to my friend Carol. She wrote back that it looked lovely. It was lovely. I still missed Wednesday.

By the second week, we were having the sort of small arguments you can’t escape by going into another room.

Ron wanted to leave early for the next stop. I wanted to stay an extra day because I’d finally got used to where everything was. That surprised him. He’d thought he’d be the one asking for more time.

We stayed. He went for a walk by himself, and I read outside. After lunch we both seemed less irritated.

Then came a rainy day. I was trying to make dinner while he sat looking at the next part of the route. I couldn’t get to the cupboard without asking him to move.

He moved. Sat somewhere else that was in the way of something else. We laughed at first. Then I got tired of being the person who kept asking.

I handed him what I’d taken out and went to read. He could make the meal. He’d cooked at home for years.

Dinner was fine. The washing up took ages. We ate breakfast out the next morning because neither of us wanted to rearrange the kitchen again.

On the seventeenth day, I asked him whether he still wanted twelve weeks.

He did. Not twelve weeks exactly like that rainy afternoon, obviously. But yes, he wanted a long stretch away. I could hear how carefully he said it.

I didn’t. I liked parts of the trip very much. I wanted to go home before four weeks had become the price of proving that.

We sat outside while people went past with dogs and laundry bags. There wasn’t a way to turn it into wanting the same thing if we explained ourselves better.

Ron asked if I’d be upset if he went for longer without me.

I was upset before I’d finished saying I wouldn’t be. Not because he shouldn’t go. Because suddenly there was a version of retirement where we weren’t always in the same place.

It took me a few days to get used to that.

We finished the four weeks. I was glad to get home. Ron was too, though he started cleaning the RV before he’d unpacked his clothes.

He later arranged a trip with his brother. Shorter than the big route he’d first planned, longer than I wanted to go. They worked out their own stops and meals. I stayed out of it after catching myself suggesting what they ought to take.

The evening before they left, I was quieter than I meant to be. Ron asked if I wanted him to cancel.

I didn’t. I wanted us to get through the first time something felt strange without treating it as proof we shouldn’t do it.

I helped him find the shirt he’d misplaced. We ate dinner at home, and he left in the morning.

I liked having the bed to myself. Missed hearing him moving around the kitchen. Enjoyed my class. Got annoyed one evening when he called just as I was leaving and then annoyed with myself for being annoyed.

When he got back, he showed me photographs. Some places I’d like to see. Some I was perfectly happy to see on his phone.

We haven’t agreed on next summer yet. There are two weeks marked on the calendar together, in pencil. He hasn’t crossed them out. Neither have I.

A real story inspired by everyday family situation.