Freak has discovered that I am a small child, soothed by long drives in the car. As the miles add up, and the flatness of Salem gives way to curves and views that remind us why we are here, my anxiety level plummets replaced by the sort of dreams that only happen in the passenger seat.
Our drives together, and the long meandering conversations that resulted from them, dried up with the rain under the pounding spring sun urging us to "get things done." And done we have, with our gorgeous garden and welcoming patio (and the weeds now only tease our ankles instead of taunting the neighbors as they reach for the sky), and the soon-to-be-done major basement remodel, and the vast unpacking of stuff from Freak's St. Louis house.
And parts of us have been "done" too, dried up under the beating heat of stress and work, our tiredness has defined many an evening as we have napped together, and considered movie watching a major victory in stress-management. But the urge to hit the road is never far from Freak's agenda, and as his personal stress has abated, he has gradually reclaimed the road as his personal relaxation zone.
The aimless driving without deadline, without goals or objectives, is exactly what I need right now. I need the wide open spaces on both sides of me, urging to consider the bounty of the future instead of wallowing in my own pit of uncertainty. It is the uncertainty which has made me slightly crazed lately, both needy and despondent and an over-eager steam roller as I become increasingly desperate in my search for a purpose which would lend definition to the murky future.
Tonight, we drove to Albany for the simple reason that we had never really driven around Albany as anything other than a gateway to points west. We started out, not for Albany, but for the health food store, for a little Dagoba nectar of the gods to sustain us. Then, the car took us on a tour of neighborhoods far out of our lifestyle as we imagined the lives we would lead to live in such sterile places, and from there Albany seemed like a natural progression of sorts. We ate amongst the locals at a Mongolian Grill dive populated by skinny teenagers and roughened truckers and a few extended families toting tired children.
And now, I am more at peace than I have been in a long time, more able to absorb the lessons of the last few weeks of being a DIY guru that things do not have to be absolutely perfect to be absolutely wonderful and that the only person I really need to please is myself (which is much easier to do if I bring my standards back down to earth). And for all my stress lately, I see the change which has been happening lately, in spite of all my whining-- as I step ever closer to the person I want to be, and creep closer towards allowing myself to enjoy having that life. My life is an open road that I can't wait to explore.
What a wonderful post. I adore your writing, but even more than that I adore the fact that you allow your readers to watch you blossom, and blossom is exactly what you are doing.
Posted by: Michele | June 22, 2005 at 05:52 PM