Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Along the journey
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
It is dawn on Saturday. Cruise control sends us rapidly along the northern lanes of Interstate 81. Few have joined us this early in the holiday weekend. I take a sip from the coffee travel mug, glance over at Olive nestled on the passenger seat, toy perched in her paws, standing ready for another round of gnawing the moment she stirs.
The car is quiet except for the voice of Frank McCourt telling his "Teacher Man" story. As Disc 1 ends and I fumble to pull Disc 2 from the case I notice the shroud of rain has lifted to greet the morning.
Rays of gold bathe the blue ridges as we barrel through the Shenandoah Valley. I inhale the promise of a new day, the golden warmth the heavens extend to the souls navigating through this passage, and think for a moment, but only a moment, of rousing the girls in the back seat. "Look," I would say. "Breathe the beauty."
I think better of it. Soon enough they would wipe the sleep from their eyes for the second time that morning. The first was just long enough to roll out of bed and into the car. They're swathed in a cocoon of blankets and pillows. Safe. Peaceful. Untouched by worries.
Soon enough Loran would awaken and remember why we are in the car on this weekend, the long weekend, the one that we had planned, just once, to stay put. Her paternal grandfather is dying. Saying goodbye might not wait until our planned Thanksgiving journey.
As the miles roll beneath the tires, I'm pulled into past journeys along interstates. Two other little girls huddled beneath blankets, anticipating arriving at the homes of welcoming grandparents. The pushing of sweets: "Have just one more cookie; it won't hurt." The requisite assessment of growth: "Let me look at you. Why you've grown at least a foot since your last visit."
Family. We'll see those other girls on this visit. Now grown women. Their childhoods so different than those of their younger sisters.
On trips they'd play the alphabet game or riddle-me-ree or read books.
During the oldest one's last journey out of childhood, as I drove her from Pennsylvania to her freshman year at the University of Alabama, she read aloud "Dolores Claiborne." I enjoyed the story, her voice, the anticipation at rest areas of what would come next. We knew it was a distraction. It kept me from spewing all the motherly advice I knew that I neglected to dispense during the previous 18 years. It kept her from responding: "Yes, Mother, how many times will you tell me these things?"
Maybe, it's the time of year, the start of a school term that revives this memory. I'm pulled back into the car, concentrating on the road. It begins to drizzle.
The girls in the back seat stir. They're awake now. I glance in the back and wonder when the rear seat was refurbished to resemble a Best Buy aisle. Each is armed with cellphone, Gameboy, earphones attached to CD players, radios; the oldest flips open a laptop to do homework, complains briefly about no Internet service in the car; the younger one forages for a DVD to watch. Could I turn my book down? It's distracting.
Distractions. Yes. I wonder when we last spent a day unplugged.
Later we visit with Loran's grandpap, my former father-in-law. No, that's not quite right. His son and I parted ways a decade ago, but I divorced him, not his family.
He welcomes the company but must force each word out, separately, distinctly. He says something about the cabin. I recall the lean-to, with its second-story row of bedrooms that he built in the Allegheny National Forest with his brother and son, and how they waited many years before their land moved to the top of the well-digger's schedule. Until that day, we toted water and visited the privvy. I recall the time squirrels nested inside. And the time that the mice rolled a marble back and forth in the hallway one very long night. The swarm of bees. The attack of the flies. The time the power went out. Until then, I didn't know how deep dark felt.
I didn't like the cabin much. He smiles, then carefully enunciates each word: "It ... is ... wild."
Wild. Yes, it is wild. It is primitive. In its unplugged, untouched way, it is tame.
Traud is a Roanoke Times editorial writer.
