Nowhere to Go

One of my favorite things to do is to travel. I love going anywhere--flying across the country, loading the car with too many books and clothes for a road trip, or just running down to Nashville on a Saturday afternoon to shop. I love the excitement of a trip, and I love what travel does to the mind and heart, how it brings empathy and togetherness and adventure and all that.

But right now, in the midst of a pandemic, there’s nowhere to go, so my family and I have been taking drives. Mostly, we focus our drives on back country roads on sunny days, with the sunroof shade back and the music loud. We roll down narrow roads between green fields dotted with black cows, and if I see something I want to photograph, Joe stops the car right there in the road, because we haven’t seen any other cars for miles. I put down my phone unless we need directions, and the kids fall asleep in the backseat, leaving Joe and me to talk in the front in hushed voices about anything that crosses our minds.

It’s not the same at all as the vacations we love to take, or the mini-escapes to surrounding cities for restaurants and bookstores and exotic clothes shops we don’t have in our town, like the Gap. But in these weird times, these little drives give me a sense of freedom. We have choices--this road or that? This playlist, or our son’s rap CD? While these decisions are not major, they make us feel a little more like us--cooperating on something we both want to do, which is a little different from figuring out who is making breakfast.

Whatever else is going on in  your life, it’s almost certain that this is not how you thought you’d be spending your April, and the events of the last two months have been at the very least disorienting. Maybe discovering and taking your version of a drive can bring you a little sanity and some peace, can lift you out of your problems for a little while and let  you escape into the fresh air while blasting Springsteen.

Maybe.