I had decided to drive home for Christmas. And once I put all those images of me stranded in a cornfield and then approached and kidnapped by Asgrow O’s Gold-logo’ed-mesh-hatted trucker in a locked drawer at the back of my head, it started to sound like the perfect idea. There would be pit-stops at interstate-side Subways with slow customer service. Cheap Caseys gas at the Mall of the Bluffs. The home of Marion Morrison and the bridges of Madison county waving me on. Signs for camping at Exit 25. Country countdowns with Bob Kingsley. The icy Mississippi just a few feet over the edge of the I-80 bridge.
Some people find this drive one of the worst in America. But I have found that while its so easy to see the snow-sprinkled poetry in the craggy peaks and canyons of the West, a place where image overcomes imagination, the Midwest calls for more work. It takes an ear for a story and a deeper life lens to sift through the wheat, corn and clapboards of the plains. This land made me who I am. It is my friend. And I am secretly sweetened by the fact that it remains largely unchanged.
At home, however, while the soft corners of my hometown’s collage looked just like they always did–memories that aren’t meant to ever pass away–most everything else had changed. And at every counter, out every window, in every closet, I would undoubtedly find suddenly-grown children, a pasture no longer empty, drawers with items I didn’t recognize. I needed that 12 hours to go home at my own pace. To watch the gradual shift from clear sticks of sun to a soft white haze. For the same reason walking the seventeen blocks from Christopher Street Station to Madison Square helps you understand New York City so much better than a subway ride, I needed to drive these roads myself.
So I filled up my Craig’s List Ford on the 19th, and in a 15 hour pocket between unpredictable ice storms, like a pioneer turning ’round, I drove back to my past.
Home was all I hoped it would be. This is significant. Because over the years, I have come to appreciate the longing and the anticipation of what’s to come rather than the object of my desire. As Rebecca Solnit says in the Field Guide to Getting Lost, “If you can only look across the distance without wanting to close it up, if you can own your longing in the same way that you own the beauty of that blue. . .”
Perhaps this strategy, which I learned from being away so long, eases your expectations. When I stayed overnight in Omaha, after I met dear Betty and Owen, but before I saw Warren Buffet’s house, my friend Patrick also presented a wise gem. He said he’d learned to “accept love however people show it”. I thought that was important.
I made the return trip in just one day, perhaps needing a little less transition time as I headed back to the future or perhaps just eager to get back to my Michael. I lived in the present, marveling at the signs and communication that American infrastructure provides, admiring the cattle’s self-constructed still life, driving into the Colorado sunset and wondering what sign would appear on Ella Pierce Turner.
It was a +.
