What's a 50/15 Mother-Daughter Road Trip? I'll Show You

Over the summer, as a newly minted 50-year-old, I took a weekend trip with my daughter, freshly turned 15. Both of us are big Radiohead fans, so when I heard that Thom Yorke’s new group, The Smile, would be playing in our favorite North Carolina mountain town of Asheville, we made plans to head east. I also had a secret agenda for this rock ‘n’ roll road trip.  

I’ve noticed that any form of movement—walking or driving—tends to grease the skids of conversation between me and my teenager, which sometimes comes in handy. Though we’re pretty close, real dialogue can be hard to come by, what with the near-constant distraction that fractures our lives. (Oh, yours too?) Juicy, free-flowing conversation can feel like a dwindling natural resource.  

So I designate our road trip a safe space—a break for both of us from the constant yoink! of group texts, Slack notifications, TikToks, social calendar demands, endless Instagram scrolling—pretty much everything that makes it hard for anyone, teenager or middle-ager, to truly connect or stay connected. “No phones on this trip,” I announce.

She agrees, more quickly than I expected. (Maybe the youth are as weary of their shackles as the rest of us.) We even decide to bring a disposable camera, so the ones on our phones won’t inadvertently drag us back online. “But what about music?” my daughter wants to know, and we agree to make an exception. Music on a road trip is an absolute must, and these days our music mostly lives on, or through, our phones, whether we like it or not. 

Music is also one of our biggest bonds; we may be Gen X and Gen Z, but we share similar tastes. As we prepare for our trip, adding tracks by various artists to a shared playlist, I think about how songs have sparked the conversations we need to have but might otherwise be too tired, too anxious, or just too complacent to rip into.

That has happened most frequently, perhaps, with Elliot Smith, an indie-rock legend who died nearly twenty years ago when he was only 34. You can’t listen to Smith for long without getting a (gorgeous) earful about difficult matters. Drug addiction, alcohol abuse, mental illness, the importance of resisting the allure of sad boys—there’s a lot to unpack. And unpack we have.

Today, we aren’t on the road three minutes before my daughter cues up a Smith song and muses that no one could possibly love his music as much as she does. 

I just smile. And consider that perhaps every time we listen together, we’re strengthening an existing connection, so that next time there’s a talk to have about...sad boys? drugs at a party? Whatever it may be—my teenager won’t shy from being forthright with me. 

As the miles fly by, we muse on the similarities of Stevie Nicks and Taylor Swift—how they both exude a tremendous, almost spooky, power. Thalia plays guitar, so I ask (because I want to hear it in her own words) what a riff is, and how it differs from a hook. We discuss melody: Is it just a singing thing? Or can it be an instrument thing? Later still, she observes that Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” seems the perfect musical accompaniment to the hazy Blue Ridge mountain landscape all around us. 

For long stretches we just listen, lost in our own reverie. We aren’t looking at our phones. We’re sharing something we love, which feels like enough. 

We also love to eat (oh, you too?), and in Asheville, the eating is exceedingly good. Over brunch at Rhubarb, in the heart of downtown, our phones remain off and our conversation flows, casual and serious both. I learn that vaping in the bathroom is very common at her high school, and I gin up some real talk about my past experience with weed.

That night, at a cute neighborhood joint called Little D’s, we admire the floral wallpaper and eavesdrop on the women sitting behind us at the bar: two strangers who sweetly strike up a friendship over the course of their meal. My daughter gamely tries my gnocchi, concludes it’s not her favorite (because she’s 15, and doesn’t know any better), and I happily devour the rest. 

At one point during the trip, when my daughter offhandedly mentions that she often feels faint, my brain goes into overdrive with worry: Is she sick, and we don’t know it? Or is it nothing, just too many white mochas, low blood pressure? My mind tries to busy itself with worst-case scenarios, and I’m tempted into googling symptoms. She catches me, tells me to chill out. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she grumbles. “And you need to get off your phone.”

On the night of the concert, our last before heading home, we share a steak at a new joint aptly named Asheville Proper. We giggle at our plate of fingerling potatoes that resemble strange sea creatures (“Weird Fishes,” anyone?) but taste absolutely divine. An hour later, waiting for Thom Yorke to take the stage in a sold-out room of fellow fans, my daughter looks around and muses that she’s the youngest person there. I don’t know, she might be right. 

The show is amazing—Yorke and his band do not disappoint—but I know that I’ve already gotten what I came for. And when he sings "We don’t know what tomorrow brings," I sing along, content to exist in this moment.