Drive
There is a jagged line of blue highways that runs between where I was born in northern Illinois and where I spent the better part of my childhood in northeast Arkansas. I first rode them as a 4 year old, sitting in the back seat of my beloved grandparents' car, on the way to spend a month with them while my father and my pregnant mother went away on a bowling trip. My memory of the trip is filled with love and laughter and too much strawberry shortcake and Dr. Pepper on a hot day. The next time I rode them, I was with my grandfather in a funeral procession of borrowed cars filled with sad, angry people and moving boxes. We went the wrong way on one of the highways and my grandfather made a wild, illegal u-turn in the median to get back on track. He had the heart of a rebel, and I loved that about him. After that trip, I came to know those highways every summer as the scenery of my heartbreak, with my father at the wheel unable to do anything but drive. We passed through land once