Saturday, July 12, 2008

I caught the moon in my rearview mirror and nearly slapped Rita’s leg to get her attention. She had been telling me stories, some of which I had heard several times before, while occasionally drawing me out of my shell to share some of my own, in order to keep us both awake. She asked me if I agreed that the new headlights these days were blinding, especially on the SUVs, which hit you right at eye level. I responded, surprising myself with an unexpected blurt of irritation at the audacity of the car manufacturers, that yes, they were like looking straight into the sun, only blue blinding white.

The "Pink, Pink, Pink" song vied for attention in my head. And for a moment, I was the driver in that Volkswagon commercial as I leaned my head closer to the window to catch a star. Rita kept wondering what the big one was as it guided us for most of our journey. I thought it was a planet, but maybe it was just another new headlight reminding me that even the stars promised no way out.

My face felt flushed from the day’s sun, and I stretched and pretzeled, yearning to catch up on the routine body movement the long car ride was preventing. But I was as tired as I was restless, and the sky was still with me, keeping me on my course, just like it always did at the beach. Rita said she would like to take Rudy to my parents’ beach house in Gulf Shores sometime. And I imagined him down there–hiding in an old barrack at Ft. Morgan during one of the grown-ups’ annual New Year’s Eve parties–bottle rockets in hand, just as we had done every year when we were kids.

The moon was almost sherbet orange, soft, and a huge sight just over the horizon. Turning around repeatedly in my seat to get a full view was not much of a risk as the open, flat Texas highway lent itself to effortless knee driving. The first sight of it was more than just warm and inspiring. It was also unexpected company, something larger than us, reminding us that we were not in control here, nor alone.

Perhaps Rita’s stories drove the car home, if not the moon. But my awareness of the road and the wheel and the petal was lost to the periphery. I remembered how Mom and Dad used to sit in the front seat of our station wagon on the way home from the beach on nights like this. Sometimes I was the only one with them, sprawled out on the back seat, looking out the window upside down at the stars. If I leaned my head back far enough I could see nothing but sky. I was a part of the abyss for that moment–not a child–but floating in a possibility, mysterious more than exciting, quiet. Then when my neck started to strain, back into the world I would immerse myself just as I had left it, safe, listening to their voices in conversation.

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