This blog is all about the future, all about preparation, planning and anticipation. But I would like to indulge one more memory that speaks to the deep-rooted restlessness that will - hopefully - fuel the preparation, planning and anticipation, and drive this big road trip straight into fruition.
When I was a kid, one of my greatest joys was taking school field trips. But it wasn't the destination, as such, that got me excited, or merely the fact that we would not be spending the day stuck in class. It was the bus ride out of town that got me every time, pulling out of the school parking lot and cruising through the neighborhoods on the way to the highway. While other kids were chatting excitedly, or settling in with their books or Walkmans, their little plastic baggies of snackables for what, given my hometown's isolation, almost always wound up being at least an hour's drive, I gazed happily, and yes a little haughtily, out the window, watching the people we passed going about their very ordinary day, and knowing that I was going somewhere special, and they, presumably, were not. It was just another Wednedsay morning to them, but the weekday had been turned upside down for me.
I was making this distinction, and reveling in it, in 1st and 2nd grade. Long before there was any reason, in my comfy, middle class, small town childhood, to feel restlessness or want to escape - or even know what in this bad old world there might be to escape to - I was feeling a strong urge to leave, and a truly visceral sense of satisfaction when I got to.
Maybe because of my comfy, middle class, small town childhood?
