My Father Calls My Mother a Cheap Date

My father calls my mother a cheap date, not because she doesn’t eat much, though she doesn’t eat much, but because her idea of a gift is a stone, a rock, a boulder—whatever size as long as she can carry it with two hands.

My parents go on one bike trip a year. Squeezing into their second layer of skin—their leathers—and packing only sun tan lotion (SPF 2) to venture out in what they call a yearly trip that saves their marriage: “It’s something we can do together.” They see new states, meet new people, pick up gifts for all the kids to come back home a week later beet red with sunglass lines.

Souvenirs are expected. Dad always gets a new Harley Shirt from a state they pass through. Jenny used to get shot glasses, but now married with a little boy she gets magnets for the fridge. I get coffee mugs cause well, I drink a lot of coffee, and they’re useful. Like my mother, I like things that have a purpose. Jesse used to get t-shirts, but he grew up and got picky about his clothes, so he gets a deck of cards that we only use at Christmas time when the whole family gets together to take money away from each other.

And my mother, she’d bring home rocks. To her rocks are useful, they are decorative, and they are free! When out in the Dakotas on a family trip with Dad and Jesse, my brother had to be the lookout while my father watched my mom roll a stone from the sandy shoulder in the badlands. She had spotted the rock just yards away, “Oh, that’s a good one! Pull over!”

I wasn’t there, but I can see it. Jesse, arms crossed leans up against the corner of the rusting van, trying to act like it is no big deal as he watches for a black and white, but also ready to hide behind the van if the cops did come. “That’s not my mother. I’m just a hitch hiker they picked up in Minnesota.”

Dad would be standing beside my mother asking her, “Are you serious? Do you really need another one? You are going to run out of room. We’ll have to buy more land to have room for all these rocks.” He laughs.

My parents’ country placed is lined with rocks: around the trees, the house, the garage, the life-size statue of a buck . . . Most of them are field stones my uncle drops off every season, but the bigger ones, the special rocks are from my mother’s travels, and as long as she can lift them, she will have another story to tell.