The Hard Part

Stopped to take my breath after two hours of driving this morning, mainly because this first leg knocked me for a loop. I had planned to head west from the end of the Lake Champlain trip, but after saying goodbye to everyone this morning and making sure to get a few extra hugs from Mom, the realization that it was the parting of the ways hit hard. Suddenly, I was pulling out of the field beside the house and breaking off from the others, all of whom would travel as one group, one caravan heading back to the MD-PA stretch we all call home.

As my road carried me west, sadness overwhelmed me. Part of the feeling was familiar, reminiscent of when I was leaving DC for Atlanta and popped up to Mom's place in Havre de Grace for one last visit. We hung out for a few hours and I left as though there was nothing special about that particular trip. Then, just a few miles down the road, before I hit the highway even, I pulled over bawling. I had spent the last five years an hour-and-a-half drive from my mom, able to come up for Saturday lunch and still make it back for a night out in DC. The absence of that simplicity hadn't crossed my mind until that moment and I wound up turning around and spending another hour with her.

That feeling swept through me today as I drove west through New York farmland, the feeling that things were getting less simple, that seeing my Mom, so incredibly easy over the last month, would get harder with every mile. Atlanta was far enough, but at least I had an income...now I will have to measure out the money or airlines miles to get me home each time. That'll take some adjustment.

I also think I left myself especially exposed to the feeling, having staved off sleep last night by clicking on a circulating Facebook link about the finale of Six Feet Under. Having never seen the show and with only a vague recollection of the synopsis, I clicked a link to a video, remembering a review that the final moments of the show were truly beautiful. And so I watched Claire driving out of the city (LA, I think?) and into the country, as the images of all of the characters' future deaths cut in, one closing moment after another. It was, as I'd heard, a gorgeous montage, even having no knowledge of the characters, but I also felt deeply connected to the emotions running unchecked across Lauren Ambrose's face as she drove east. There is something so deeply frightening and sad and exciting and fresh about pointing a car away from the majority of people you love and just going (even when there are loved ones in the direction you're heading). I'm only 2 hours into the week...8 more to go today and 38 more in total, and yet here I am, already reeling. One way or another, this will be an experience.