MI/A — Road Trips and Home

The most insane thing I’ve done on the road is deciding to pass two coach buses on a one-lane road at 11pm in the mountains of New Hampshire. While on the other side of the road, I saw the lights of an oncoming vehicle. I, without checking my blind spot, sped up and swerved in front of the bus, praying I wouldn’t clip it. I was seconds away from a head-on collision that would have probably killed me and three of my best friends.

The second most insane thing I’ve done on the road was getting up four hours after that harrowing drive and driving 13 hours to Grand Rapids by myself. After a weekend like that and an earlier solo trip to Akron, OH, I’m pretty confident I can drive anywhere.

When I told my housemates that I was planning on leaving at 2 am for Massachusetts this summer, they thought I was bonkers to be a. making the trip in one day and b. starting so dang early. But being a product of my parents, I started to wake up earlier and earlier as the day of reckoning drew close—changing light bulbs at 4 am, reading at 5 am, requesting library books at 7 am. The idea was that I’d force my body to go to bed earlier; I’m unhappy to report this theory doesn’t work when you have fun housemates and a neighborhood that consistently sets off fireworks from 10 pm on.

Nevertheless, with my food packed and podcasts downloaded, I set out at 2:40 am on July 1st. Well, 2:50 am since I had to turn around and grab the masks that I forgot. 

Other than podcasts and working out in rest stop parking lots, there's not much variety in the Michigan-Massachusetts road trip (you spend approximately 8 to 10 hours of your trip on the same freeway—love you I-90). Yes, there are podcasts that made me call my father and say, “I know it’s been on every anti-racism list, but like, Dad, it’s so good! They are talking about the lack of healthcare after slavery and it’s exactly what’s happening today. Exactly!” But most of my trip, I oscillated between two moments.

There’s the moment where all I can see is the road, a blue sky, and a couple of truckers, and I think, “Wow, I feel pretty good! I could do this all day!” And then there’s the other moment when I'm sick of everything: not excited about any podcasts, tired of cruise control, tired of people passing me on the road, sick of trying not to reach over and grab another snack. I play games with yourself, saying, “I’m going to wait until 1:30 to eat another brownie. Then I’ll know I'm actually hungry.” After each of these moments, I look at the clock, sigh, and stretch my legs as far as they could go.

Then there’s another category—the spiritual/weird moment that only comes once or twice a trip. Mine came at 8:30 am, having just finished the last episode of The Scaredy-Cat Horror Show. The music faded, and I paused the audio. I had seen myself earlier in that small corner of the rearview mirror that you can find when you stretch up, sunglasses on my head, and I had that weird premonition, remembering all the times she was cruising down the road, sunglasses on her head. I felt my mom’s presence. That’s weird to say, but I did. And nearly out of nowhere, a stew of anger and sadness boiled over. 

“Everything was going fine, and then you died, and then my life fell apart.” I gritted my teeth while tears rolled down my face and cars sped by.

I let God know how I was feeling as well (as I'm not sure whether I really believe that Mom is disembodied and could actually be listening to me) and my tears subsided. The road came back into focus, and I took a couple of deep breaths. I moved on. Fifteen minutes later, Sarah called me.

When I made the return trip to Michigan two weeks and a half, I didn’t heed the Johnson way. I was too busy seeing people every night to care about going to bed on time, so I decided I would just live with the 2am bleariness and chug some caffeinated water. I fought the weather: I drove with maybe 20 feet of visibility for the first 3 hours thanks to the heaviest fog I’ve ever driven through. The weird moment came when I believed I could see a fire roaring a bit inland from the road around 3:30am but then later thought that streetlights fuzzed by fog were further fires. There were no stand-out podcasts, although I did enjoy The Penumbra Podcast despite the awful audio balancing and Planet Money's Summer School series despite my aversion to learning. I-90 welcomed me back with open arms.

I only felt tired when I stood outside of Nizhoni, fumbling with my keys to get into my other home. My housemates trickled by, welcoming me back as I brought in loads of goodies from home: forgotten kitchen cabinet condiments, old hot chocolate, cast iron pans, books from my childhood room. It would take the next few weeks to learn what I had missed while in Massachusetts—a corn documentary, lapsed workouts, nature movies, frozen coffee creamer snacks, conversations in the kitchen. And yet, I could only grin as I screwed in the porch lights that had been neglected for the past two weeks.

In the age of flying and video chats, it's been easy for me to forget how far away my life as an adult is from my life as a child. I've never been reminded so starkly of this fact as I struggled to transition: the whiplash of going from Nizhoni to Massachusetts and vice versa left me reeling on both ends. The day after each road trip I thought, "Why am I here? Why did I leave the other place?" and then "How could I have left this place?"

It's a gift to have two places that you can call home, but it's hard to live with a heart divided in two. It's marginally easier when you enjoy making the trip between the halves.