Washed my bedding, fluffed my pillows, cooked and packed some lunch and some dinner for the westerly road, packed the Escapay, removed the wasp hive from KCD's front entryway -- I had to kill today -- I don't like to kill, even the French rats back home on the compound, on Cantura Street; I don't like to kill, especially that birdie that flew into my windshield along the roadway the other day, I don't like to kill, even the solo wasp this morning, but I couldn't let it finish building it's combhome there outside the door. Hey, some days are killer days and I just don't like to kill -- so anyway, I took my last skinny dip in KCD's Texan pool, toweled off in that hot sun and called him at work and said bye bye, walked out the waspless front door, stood on the cinderblock and untangled Old Glory one more time, saluted and drove away. Warning: Sentimentality Ahead.
All my life, even my child life, I've been driving away from loved ones in Texas. Used to come down here -- Mom, Dad, sisters & brother -- to Texas -- yes I can remember the 50's and the 60's -- for family reunions -- cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents -- it was always so hard to leave. I never got to see any of them enough and of course I wanted more. Plus the eating was always really good -- a family of Southern cooks.
None of us still in Texas these days, I don't think. None that know me anyway. And no family of which I'm aware. It was east Texas, where we visited. I always called it west Arkansas over there where we reunioned, but it was still Texas, as we all know; and I always remember the leaving as much as I remember the being there. At leaving time as each family would pack up to head home the extended family always gathered, we always did this, bowing heads and praying together before hitting the road. Invoking His name, we said our words, our words of gratitude for being together and then, always, praying for "traveling mercies," -- those were our words: traveling mercies: meaning: Sweet Jesus keep us all of us safe on the road.
More than a quaint Southern tradition or retro/evangelo-Christian affectation, I'm sure people still do this type of praying today. Plenty do, yew, but no one I know -- or more precisely, no one in my desacralized everyday world.
Who's loss is that? I might ask myself. Whose? Anyway, those are the only two words I remember from any of those prayers: traveling mercies.
I still like that concept. Those concepts. That of stopping to pray and that of road mercy.
Departure was no big boo-hoo-fest, but it wasn't only my mom who teared-up when we headed out either. I remember that too. We all saddened up.
Flash forward to 2007. No gathered prayers upon my solitary departure today, though. Nope.
I know you know I loathe sentimentality. But I also know you know the loathing does not make me immune to emotion, to feeling, to passion. Happy to report that I cried a little as I sat in the kitchen writing my bye bye note to KCD today. Then got on the road, thinking that throat lump would fade away fast, thinking I'd fuggidabouttit, thinking my tears would evaporate as I motored westerly.
But I gotta admit just like always when driving away in Texas all those years ago, this time, this big-man adult-time, my little heart hurt more miles than one woulddathunk.
Thought that ouch wouldda been gone by Abilene, but it warn't. Lordy. Thought that ouch wouldda been gone by Big Spring. But nope. I'll leave it to you to look at the road atlas, the Texas counties map, the map'o'the'Soutwest. Hey, this ain't the place to analyze feelers. Nope. This is the place for reportin'. I report, you analyze.
Makes me think: That's the o-n-l-y good thing about flying as a means of travel.I don't much like to fly any more. Fact is: I'd rather Greyhound. Uh huh.
Flying: When heading for the plane you don't say byebye at home because you pretend you'll say byebye at the airport-- you'll do all of your unfinished business there curbside. But you get to the airport and the traffic's crazy and the patrolman won't let you linger and everyone's rushing and there's no time for eye contact or true love or real byebyes (whew!) so you just get dropped off with a hug and a promise and then you turn your back -- with a wave -- and you get to focus then on your carry-ons and your boarding pass and your ticket and your ID, and you go check the departure boards and you snake through security and you get to Auntie Anne's
and get a pretzel dog with yellow mustard -- well, if traveling alone you might get two pretzel dogs, hell, who's counting? -- and pick up a Cinnabon -- well, you're on vacation and even your diet's on vacation, so why not? -- and you get a bottle of water for the plane and by then you've neatly forgotten about
who luvs ya, who just dropped you off, who you're missing, because it's time to face flying and think about the in-flight movie and will I get upgraded and where are my Bose and where's my book, and thinking about being home in flight-time and where's my Parking Spot receipt anyway?
Not so when you're rolling alone, when you're road-tripping, when you're camping your way across the horizon, when you're tented and solitary and grateful for the solitude and the occasional loneliness. Doesn't work that way in road time. Old fashioned time. Real time. All night time. All day time. American time.
When you're road tripping you have time to think about everybody and all of it. And you get to, um, be here now.
Don't get me wrongo. The road can hynotize and benumb. But it can also focus and heighten. Not suggesting we wallow in misery. Just that it's good to hurt. It's good to be sad. It's good to miss. As LB, may Light Perpetual shine upon him, as LB used to tell us: "If it don't, hurt it ain't love."
Ain't that the truth.
Motoring out of East Texas always did hurt. Still does. Hurt the youngish me. Hurts the oldish me. Hey, that's life and that's love.
No comments:
Post a Comment