Chapter 1
Peggy and Ron

Their third child, Julie, was born mentally retarded. In the sixties they didn't call it autistic. They didn't call it special. They called it unfortunate. It was a challenge, but it wasn't a curse. It was what you signed up for. Peggy and her husband Ron had just had twins a year earlier, a boy and a girl. That should have been enough. Peggy was thirty-four and Ron was fifty. She had remained a single woman until the last minute, and he was a bachelor, retired from the navy and the war. When they met at a summer retreat in the scenic Rocky Mountains of Canada, they both knew it was their last chance to have a family. The couple immediately got married. Less than two years later, they already had three kids.
According to Freud, a woman carries a purse because it is an unconscious metaphor for her womb. Peggy's Volkswagen van carried her most important belongings. It was the vehicle that transported her offspring, like a mother kangaroo carries her kids from place to place, until they are old enough and strong enough to jump out into the world on their own. Julie wasn't able to do that. She would never talk or be able to take care of herself. Peggy knew it, and so did Ron. That was how it was. It was going to be a long journey, with a great reward.
Before he met Peggy, Ron had never needed to carry anything, except a duffel bag and his shaving kit. Whichever ship he was aboard was the only vessel he ever depended on. It housed him, fed him, clothed him, protected him, and guided him through treacherous seas and into safe harbors. Her Majesty had always called the shots, and for over three decades he had served her. Now he suddenly had no orders to follow. He was unmoored from his duties, directionless and free. Then he met Peggy—the woman who became the captain of his destiny. He followed her command and trusted her completely. He did so until the end of his life. He was in good hands, and he knew it.
In 1930, Ron had little choice but to join the navy. The Great Depression was already ravaging England, and there were few options for a young lad just out of school. His father had given him a simple choice: join the police or join the navy. He was sixteen. A friend of his father's was a constable at the local precinct. He invited the boy around for the day to see how he liked it. Young Ronny said being a policeman didn't much appeal to him, so that was that. He enlisted in the British merchant navy, left his home in Yorkshire, and immediately boarded a cargo ship out of Liverpool headed to South America. He didn't return to England for another two years. He was shipped off again. He went to every place you can go. Eventually, he circled the world three times. He made it through the war and finally to retirement.
On his first voyage, a schooner took him across the Atlantic to a distant port in the tropics. Everywhere there were kids running around like flies, tugging at his pant legs and begging for food or money. Young Ron and his sailor mates stumbled into a cafe that offered a little shade from the hot Brazilian sun. A man came out and asked them what they wanted to drink. They looked around, "Whatever those kids are having." The proprietor came back in a few minutes with their order. Ron said, "Hey! This is beer!" and the man said, "Yeah, you said you wanted what the kids are drinking." After Brazil they went to Argentina, then around Cape Horn, across the Pacific to India, then to the Middle East and up the Suez Canal, then all the way back around South Africa, and up the Ivory Coast.
That same year, Peggy was born in a busy hospital in New York City. Her mother was only fifteen. The young woman had run away from her family and was toiling away as a domestic servant in a workhouse for wayward girls. It was a miserable place, but there was little else for a girl in her shoes. The runaway met an Irish immigrant named Burns who was five years older. He got her pregnant. The young mother, either with or without the help of the child's father, made an effort to take care of her baby as best she could. She tried for a number of months, but it just became too hard. She had named the child Millicent. Millicent was strong and healthy, and hungry. Finally, one morning, her mother made the somber decision to give her infant up for adoption. She entered an orphanage in Brooklyn who took in the child, and immediately found a good home for her with a nice couple who had the means to raise her in those tough times. They were a childless couple in their thirties, who lived in nearby Hackettstown, New Jersey. The husband was a dairy salesman who had managed to remain gainfully employed despite the Depression. His wife Harriet had been unable to have children of her own. They brought home the baby girl and renamed her Margaret Louise. She was raised as an only child in a middle-class neighborhood. Later in school, she got the nickname, Peggy.
When Peggy got old enough, her parents told her that she had been adopted. As she eventually grew into an independent young woman, Peggy struggled with the circumstances of her birth. She obviously felt somewhat abandoned and confused. She wanted to know the truth; she wanted answers about her real parents. But Peggy's mother felt resentment about her curiosity, and she refused to divulge the details. "You should be grateful! You would be in the gutter if it weren't for your father and me!" In a spiteful rage, her mother opened the family safe and burned the records of Peggy's adoption, right in front of her. After that, they never talked about it again. Peggy didn't forget that unforgiveable incident. It caused a bitter rift between the mother and daughter that was never repaired. It was only years and years later, just before her death, that Peggy found out the true facts of her birth and was finally able to gain the peace and closure that had haunted her all her life.
Upon graduation from high school in 1948, Peggy left home for college. She was independent and ambitious. She wanted to travel far away and take on the world. She did just that. She earned a master's degree in home economics and set off for England. She was awarded a teaching scholarship at Stratford-upon-Avon, where she taught cooking and sewing at a British boarding school for half a dozen seasons. In the summers, she traveled extensively throughout Europe to France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, and Switzerland. Her friends were all getting married, but Peggy wasn't ready to settle down yet. She returned to the States still restless and single. Her mother shamed her. "You're going to be an old maid." Within a few years, however, she met Ron and had children. After the twins were born, Peggy's mother warned her not to have a third child. "Quit while you're ahead," she said. Maybe it was for the satisfaction of proving her mother wrong. Anyway, it's not selfish to want to have more children.
After Julie was born, they noticed something was wrong. For several months, they thought she might be deaf. Once the diagnosis of her retardation had been confirmed, it only made things worse between Peggy and her mother. But it wasn't Julie's fault. You couldn't use her like that. You couldn't forsake an innocent and disabled child. She was the way she was. It wasn't about revenge or "I told you so." It had just happened, that's all, and for a reason which nobody understood or could ever solve. There were plenty of attempts to find doctors and do tests that might have provided some hope or offered a meaningful explanation. What was the point? They would never know why or how it had happened, and they eventually stopped asking. You can't look at it as a bad thing. You try to make life rewarding as best you can—not just for yourself.
Peggy had been on her own for a good time, making sure she got what she needed, and what she deserved. But now Peggy's life was not only about herself anymore; it was about her children and her husband. She held the family all together and took them with her. It was that Volkswagen van, strangely enough, which ended up being her greatest ally. It was a symbol and a vehicle of her fortitude and persistence, of conquering adversity, surviving, and thriving and never giving up. It was like a portable safety deposit box containing all the memories and adventures she collected along the way. It kept her family protected and together. She kept the car going and it kept her going. She carried us all, from one place to the next place, and to a better place after that. She plowed ahead without any regrets. She drove us to our destination. She left the sorrows and the tribulations of the past in the rearview mirror, and never looked back. For Peggy, it was personal. It was a job only she could have taken on; it was a life only she could have accomplished. She did it well and she completed the job. That is what this book is about.

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