on the road

I've spent a considerable portion of my life on the road. If I were to sort out my most favorite memories, I'm convinced most of them came to be while on some roadtrip or another (perks of having parents with a penchant for adventures and going-places.) There's something about being piled in the backseat of a truck in a heap of sweaty siblings and pillows for leg-cramping hours at a time / waking up to a groggy sunrise / my mom making passing back sandwiches on quarter-baguettes from the front seat. Stevie Wonder 5-part family sing-alongs / bathroom stops in dingy little gas stations / stretches of non-city views for miles miles miles.

Laying back in my little sister's lap at 3am and looking up through the windows so that all I can see are fly-by stars and no road, as if we weren't anywhere close to an earth at all / when everyone but my driving father is asleep, their hot sleeping cheeks pressed against the cold glass of the window. Waking up warm on one side with the heat of another body, cold on the other with the foggy highway dawn. Finally finally reaching A Place, stumbling out of the car barefooted and bed-headed and grateful and antsy, blessed to finally be ocean-windwhipped and ankle deep in burning sand.

Lately, however, and more often than not, I find myself sitting in canned AC, drinking bottled water, drowsy between underlining a textbook or replying to an email - and achy-breaky for the familiar discomfort of my snoring siblings' bony warm bodies in the middle of a dark countryside at 3am.