the drive down...

today i slept in late. i stayed up too long watching episodes of top chef on the internet.

when i finally got up i packed a few things and got in the car. headed down to the berg to do some apartment hunting with boo.

as i drove that strecth of highwway 49 between jackson and the hub city that i have driven so much in recent months i thought about other strecthes of highway i have become familiar with over the years.

when we were children we alsmost never lived in the same town, or even the same state, as our grandparents. (as a minister's family you go where the Lord calls you know matter how far from family and friends He may take you.) the roads between wherever we were and lake of the ozarks, missouri and canton, mississippi, where both sets of relatives lived, were as much a part of our lives as children as the people waiting at their end. in that time we lived in what buechner would call once below a time. that magical point in our lives when we are still young and innocent and we know nothing really of time and space dimensions, only what we see and what we feel on a daily basis. "how much longer?" we would whine from the back seat. "its like two sesame streets and one mr. rogers to go." Our wise momma would tells us when we were two and half hours away. and we got it. that kind of time made since to us back then.

you knew that mamal and daddy duke's house in the hills of MO was getting close when you began to see the rocks form on the sides of the highway reaching up like mini mountaians on either side. our hearts raced as these mini moutains got higher and higher until at long last we were pulling up that old familiar hill that was their driveway. passing lake. passing iris. passing stump. home.

the "big golf ball" (mc's coliseum) was the sign on the way to mimi and dandy's. (its so strange to think now that i have made my place of dwelling not five minutes from this very spot for almost ten years now.) next came the lee's water tower; in the days long before madison's eiffle tower this was the next big landmark on the horizon. then came the railroad tracks. then the rolling greens. passing lake. passing azalea. passing golf carts. home.

i also traveled a lot in college. my early years of college i spent at mary hardin baylor about 45 minutes from my parents house in texas. i lived in the dorms but traveled home to gatesville quite frequently with crosby. he played piano at our church and so most sunday and wednesday nights i drove with him that long stretch of highway between g-ville and umhb. the flashing yellow lights in the distance as we left fort hood headed for lake belton. then waving goodbye behind us. did they signal what was ahead for us both? i was in love with him back then. in what buechner would call once upon a time. i had known what it was to break, no longer innocent to time, space, distance and pain. hesitant to reach out across the seat that seemed to stretch out between us in my mind longer than old highway 36. i studied hikus in my creative writing classes. and when i told him he composed one on the spot.
"there are two cities.
and one man lives in them both.
a bridge connects them."
i knew that this meant we would never be togther. not because we didn't fit, or i didn't love him enough, but because i knew both men. both what he had been and what he wanted to become. he was talking about the bridge over lake belton, but he was talking about me too. i was the line he connected his dots with. that night i cried silent tears into the window praying he could not hear me. today a silent tear again. i weep because he has become the man he set out alone to be. passing lake. passing blue bonnet. passing youth. home.

i think sometimes home is not so much a place where we settle, as it is the things we pass along the way. i think that this is what buechner would call once beyond a time. what donald miller would describe as beginning to see the lines in His face. i think i am closer now than i was back then. i think the highway stretches long before me still...


Today I am listening to:
avett brothers--emotionalism--paranoia in b minor
lucreo--tennessee--sweet little thing
van morrisson--brown eyed girl--i love you

Today I am reading:
buecner--a sacred journey
donald miller--blue like jazz

Poem of the Day:
A little road not made of man,
Enabled of the eye,
Accessible to thill of bee,
Or cart of butterfly.

If town it have, beyond itself,
’T is that I cannot say;
I only sigh,—no vehicle
Bears me along that way.
--Emily Dickinson