The Drive Home

The Drive Home

I felt like I’d been driving in a circle for hours. I couldn’t seem to find my way out of this town. I had become so dependent on my GPS that I barely paid attention to details anymore. Who needs to? Well, now I know. A person who breaks her GPS. Sometimes I wondered if I was ever going to actually grow up.

How do you break a GPS? I’ll let you know if I ever find my way out of this town and get back to the store that sold it to me. It was supposed to be the best, the newest, top of the line!!

I notice a rock that honestly looks familiar. A rock! How many times do you have to pass the same rock before it looks familiar? Why don’t the houses look familiar? Why the rock?

I hit a bump in the road, oddly, that seems familiar too. Suddenly I remembered a road from my past, a road with a bump. I don’t seem to be driving in the memory. I’m in the passenger seat, and who’s driving? It’s my mother.

The memory suddenly explodes into my brain. My mother, driving us away from our old house. She’s crying. She’s telling me we can’t go back, Daddy is gone. I ask where did he go? She says he left us, we have to go live with Gramma.

I actually pull over. I have never remembered that moment. I only ever knew we lived with Gramma, that Daddy was gone. I always thought he died.

It took me an hour to get going again. Somehow, I wasn’t lost anymore. I made all the right turns without my GPS. I drove right to my mother’s house.

Suddenly I felt very adult, and this adult needed some answers.