How not to kill your parents on a motorhome holiday

Honestly? I didn’t think it through. I chucked some stuff into a suitcase — big wedges, little cocktail dress, hairdryer — and rather absent-mindedly boarded a flight from New York, where I now live, to San Francisco to join my parents’ great American road trip.
It was only as we were sitting in their rental camper van on a strip of tarmac just north of Oakland, eating salami sandwiches while surveying an enormous Target supermarket, that I was confronted with the reality of my decision. Oh God, I thought. What have I done? The three of us. For a week. In a van. Dad sleeping above the cab. Mum with her feet by the washing-up. Me on the dining table. Hundreds of miles of Californian road ahead of us.
I looked in the cupboards. Oh God, I thought again. We were woefully underprepared. We are not and never have been “campers”. All we seemed to have was a scented candle, a pot of Marmite zipped into a Clarins washbag, a bottle of riesling (we needed more), four disposable vapes (I needed more), one anorak (for the summer drought?) and a chiropractic pillow. Well, as someone who came out the other side, via Napa wine country, Yosemite and Lake Tahoe, this is what I learnt from my time with the other two.
The child/adult identity of a 29-year-old is unpredictable and changeable. Am I a grown woman who has her own life and freedoms and who should be respected as such by her parents? Yes. Am I their needy child who is allowed to sit in the back seat in silence while listening to my music on headphones and secretly vaping out the window like a teenager? Also yes.
“Megan, what else did you put in the trolley when we weren’t looking?” one of them had the cheek to ask me shortly after they had paid the supermarket bill. “Our client will not be taking any further questions on the matter,” I fired back, as per my rights. No one knows what role I play in relation to them any more, including myself. It’s a glorious grey area that should be exploited.
Campsites need a touch of glamour, so don’t be afraid to bring out the outfits. Mum wafting around the Sierra Nevada desert in her silk-printed robe? It’s a slay. Dad in a pair of electric-blue suede driving loafers striding across a car park to put on a wash at the communal machines? Also a slay. My parents can be annoying as people, sure, but they have taught me the value of chic.
When articulating concerns about age- related issues, it’s always best to use the first-person plural. As in: “How do our knees feel going down this hill?” or “We should all be mindful of our physical limitations.” I find it to be a non-patronising and subtle way to make sure none of us (them) drop down dead.
If it had been just me and Dad, we would have done a full audit of the storage in the RV (recreational vehicle) months earlier, cross-referenced against our belongings, followed by a dress rehearsal in the garage about what went where, then a methodical implementation of said packing scheme on arrival — preferably with no input from my mother who is, unfortunately, an artist and would rather “go with the flow”. Yes, it was difficult for us to have her there, but she did challenge our core character traits, which, with the help of an expensive therapist, I am now willing to acknowledge is a good thing.
After a few days in California I felt confident enough to embrace the local language in regard to expressing love for your family et cetera. “I’m so pleased we could do this trip before we all die,” I said one night as we sat underneath the enormous Oh Ridge sky. To which they told me in English (British) to stop being so melodramatic, Megan, but I meant it and it was true because even or especially when we were trapped in a tiny van arguing over an effing parking space or standing speechless in front of a huge rock in Yosemite or drinking actual pints of margaritas at a roadside diner, the week was silly and infuriating and extraordinary and I am thrilled that we (they) are alive.
Matt Rudd is away