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 ...