Doing the Work

2,133 miles.

That is what Siri, Google Maps and Map Quest estimate the drive time to be. Yes. I said drive time.

2,133 miles equals roughly 30 hours and 42 minutes.

I realize that means something to everyone else ( Fibonacci and da Vinci and the rest of the scientific and artistic world are in on the secret ) but to me…… numbers mean almost nothing.

For me……30 hours and 42 minutes is the duration of a Pink Floyd or Zeppelin album. It is the eternity spent waiting in line sandwiched between strangers at a coffee shop. It is time spent waiting for my heartbeat to regain its normal rhythm after a stressful or pleasurable encounter. It is the time I don’t spend sleeping; the time I spend dreaming. It is the time between the Mesozoic and Cretaceous Period; between reptilian and mammalian thinking. The time between inhale and exhale.

Between ka and boom.

30 hours and 42 minutes is the blink of an eye and a lifetime rolled into one “don’t look away or you will miss it never ending moment.”

So to me, 2,133 miles was nothing. Yet it turned out to be everything.

We drove at my behest.

We drove because I don’t trust.

We drove because I like to be in control.

We drove because I like to listen to the radio.

And stop at roadside attractions.

For Twizzlers and Big Gulps.

We drove because my husband is a Saint.

We drove because I have four pets two of which would have to ride cargo if we flew. And again, I don’t trust.

We drove because I felt it was important to make it difficult.

To not take the easy way.

To feel each mile, to be part of the journey, not just arrive refreshed at the destination.

We drove because I felt it was important to actually do the work.

The work of sitting in a car hour after hour after hour. The work of listening to dogs whine and cats yowl and static take over the airwaves as we drove through places not marked on GPS or any map.

The work of navigating not only the highways and awkward silences and claustrophobia of a rented minivan filled with too many living things and one suitcase to many, but also navigating the internal complexities of all the questions others and myself have been asking, the biggest of which is:

“Why?”

“Why leave the place you have lived for so many years?”

“Why uproot your family?”

“Why start all over again?”

“Why rock the boat?”

“Why disrupt the status quo?”

“Why this place of all places?”

“Why, Why, Why?”

We drove because I needed time to answer those questions. To feel the gravity and reality of the choices I was making.

To understand what 2,133 miles actually meant.

The enormity of the distance I was putting between where I was and where I was headed.

Between start and end. Because this place I am headed to will end me. The version of me I have been for so long now. This is one thing I know for sure.

I feel it as the open desert gives way to pine trees gives way to swamp land gives way to trees that root so deep roads curve and divide around them; nature allowing passage only on her terms.

I feel it walking the dogs on a path hidden from view behind a God Damn Mother Fucking La Quinta Inn off the highway in Louisiana. A wooden bridge extends over water filled with lily pads and frogs and lightning bugs and I realize that although we have moved three hours ahead in time zones, I am actually going backwards. I am eleven years old all over again. Running wild with my friends in the woods of upstate New York. Barefoot and wearing the forest. Fearless and reckless. I am someone I recognize for the first time in a long time. Perhaps as we age, I think to myself, and head towards “the end” part of us steers us back to “the beginning.” Back to the most primitive and pure versions of ourselves. Back to before society and the world told us what we should want and who we should be.

As I return to the car and we start driving, I sense there has been a change.

A shift.

There is a forward momentum I hadn’t felt before. The push from a place that never fit quite right becomes a pull towards something that feels like home.

We drove because I needed to know what 2,133 miles felt like.

We drove because I needed time alone with myself in the passenger seat; feet on the dash feigning sleep behind over sized sunglasses as semi trucks and the last gas for 70 miles, and all of the towns that time has forgotten move forward and stand still on the right hand side of the interstate.

We drove because movement is primal; species preserved in tar in Los Angeles. Caravans, wagon trains, ships guided by stars, all a testament to movement and forging ahead, to blindly following an instinct, a dream of something unknown. Something new. Something better.

We drove because I needed answers I may never get.

We drove because numbers mean nothing to me.