Road Trip with Mom: Another Prologue, June 24
Mom and I don’t hit the road until tomorrow morning; but today I experienced the mini, road trip-the road trip that I take every time I come “home.” The first time I brought my ex-husband here in 1994, as we crossed the bridge over the Susquehanna River-less than a mile from my parents’ house-he took in the cliffs along 92 and said, “It’s like you live in a National Park!” At that time, I didn’t view home as particularly special or beautiful because I hadn’t yet lived anywhere else but in rural Pennsylvania. But over the years, as I’ve moved from one city to the next, I have learned that the place that raised me is like a National Park, beautiful and clean and fairly safe from destruction. It hasn’t changed much in my lifetime. While I expect at least one fracking-related natural disaster to mar it in my future, I try to not to think about that as I take in the comfortingly familiar sites along the roadsides and grow calmer as the river approaches.
When I’m about fifteen miles from my parents’ house, I lose the highway and follow the river for the remainder of the ride, never missing a glimpse of the house that has been the object of my fantasies since the first time I saw it decades ago. It was built by a coal baron at the turn of the century; and it has survived opulence, looting, and neglect. I don’t know who owns it now, but I haven’t seen a car in the driveway lately, and the grass is overgrown. I have a word-of-mouth history of it stored on my dead iPhone, information I gathered from one of my mother’s friends who has lived in the area her entire life. I think it changed hands for very little in the eighties or nineties, and the new “resident” made a fortune tearing out its mantels, mirrors, and fixtures and selling them one-by-one. I can’t imagine what it looks like inside without the gorgeous, marble and brass trimmings that I always imagined were in there. If I owned it--and I will find a way to own it if I ever have the means--I would track down replacement fixtures and lovingly restore it and its grounds.
This house stands about five miles from my final destination, another house in the woods.
My mood going up that long driveway is always different. Today I felt guilty, because I knew my parents had made dinner, and I had stopped at Sonic regardless and bought a large, chocolate, malted milkshake and gave myself a headache trying to finish it before I arrived. The smiling carhop brought it out to me. But before he gave me my shake (which contained 208 grams of carbs, incidentally), he handed me a straw with a piece of string attached. The straw on its taut string resisted when I tried to pull it into my car. So I did something automatic, yet illogical, and I slowly untied the string without looking for its other end. It flew up as soon as I had freed it from the straw, and then I and the smiling carhop watched the pink balloon sail about thirty feet across the parking lot and become tangled in the electrical wires behind the restaurant. The carhop and I then just stared at each other. He still smiling.
“I didn’t know there was a balloon attached to that string,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, still smiling.
“When did you start handing out balloons?” I asked.
“Just today,” he replied, still smiling. And I received no further explanation.
A lot of other things happened before and during my mini, road trip. I even survived a giant, traffic jam. But sending that pink balloon adrift across the Sonic parking lot was definitely the strangest thing. I am still haunted by my impulse to untie the string without ever checking to see what it attached.
When I’m about fifteen miles from my parents’ house, I lose the highway and follow the river for the remainder of the ride, never missing a glimpse of the house that has been the object of my fantasies since the first time I saw it decades ago. It was built by a coal baron at the turn of the century; and it has survived opulence, looting, and neglect. I don’t know who owns it now, but I haven’t seen a car in the driveway lately, and the grass is overgrown. I have a word-of-mouth history of it stored on my dead iPhone, information I gathered from one of my mother’s friends who has lived in the area her entire life. I think it changed hands for very little in the eighties or nineties, and the new “resident” made a fortune tearing out its mantels, mirrors, and fixtures and selling them one-by-one. I can’t imagine what it looks like inside without the gorgeous, marble and brass trimmings that I always imagined were in there. If I owned it--and I will find a way to own it if I ever have the means--I would track down replacement fixtures and lovingly restore it and its grounds.
This house stands about five miles from my final destination, another house in the woods.
My mood going up that long driveway is always different. Today I felt guilty, because I knew my parents had made dinner, and I had stopped at Sonic regardless and bought a large, chocolate, malted milkshake and gave myself a headache trying to finish it before I arrived. The smiling carhop brought it out to me. But before he gave me my shake (which contained 208 grams of carbs, incidentally), he handed me a straw with a piece of string attached. The straw on its taut string resisted when I tried to pull it into my car. So I did something automatic, yet illogical, and I slowly untied the string without looking for its other end. It flew up as soon as I had freed it from the straw, and then I and the smiling carhop watched the pink balloon sail about thirty feet across the parking lot and become tangled in the electrical wires behind the restaurant. The carhop and I then just stared at each other. He still smiling.
“I didn’t know there was a balloon attached to that string,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, still smiling.
“When did you start handing out balloons?” I asked.
“Just today,” he replied, still smiling. And I received no further explanation.
A lot of other things happened before and during my mini, road trip. I even survived a giant, traffic jam. But sending that pink balloon adrift across the Sonic parking lot was definitely the strangest thing. I am still haunted by my impulse to untie the string without ever checking to see what it attached.