Robert Frost Was Right—Part One

The trip from Minnesota to Houston was a long one.

It wasn’t about the physical distance. Long car rides never bother me—I find a great deal of pleasure staring out a car window at the great expanse of my homeland. I love being on a long stretch of road, seeing the beautiful landscape dotted with small towns and houses and yards with clotheslines and swing sets—and every once in awhile, seeing people moving about. Road trips make me contemplative, reflecting on my own life and wondering about the lives of others and their level of satisfaction relative to my own.

This long journey was about the company I kept, the people I would see when I reached my destination, and the past that I was finally able to leave behind.

I headed down to Houston to watch my girl graduate high school. There was a lot of logistical planning—the flight from Minnesota to Denver… the rendezvous with the parental unit in Denver, and then the long drive to Houston, piloting their every-bell-and-whistle-known-to-man minivan—with a radio that was programmed to play only mind-numbing, conservative talk radio.

For starters, I hate to fly. I’m a bit of a control-freak. I like to be in the driver’s seat—on so many levels. However, my fear of flying is quelled by my love of the airport 24-hour lounge. Half a Valium and a couple of Crown and 7s at 10 a.m., and suddenly flying at 30,000 feet isn’t so bad.

I landed in Denver mid-afternoon, numb and half-tanked. I hate DIA. It’s the Hollywood starlet of airports. Pretty on the outside. F*cked up and confused on the inside. I navigated my way through the terminal to the train, which whisked me to baggage claim. The first stop on my journey back to the future.

The same scenario has played out since the first time I left home and came back. I see my mom and my aunt Connie in the distance, and pray that I can sneak up on them before they notice me—and summarily embarrass me in front of thousands of strangers. But alas, it never happens the way I hope it does.

My aunt Connie notices me first. She’s not my aunt by blood—I’ve just known her my whole life because she’s my mother’s best friend. And I love her to pieces. But she’s loud—with bleach-streaked hair, a red silk bowling jacket and a nasal voice that cuts through the crowd, screaming, “There she is!” And every head in the airport whips around in my direction. And my mother, whose mind hasn’t told her legs she’s not as young as she used to be—throws her arms up in the air and comes “running” toward me, shouting “My baby! Would you just look at her?”

I’m 38 years old, and the minute I see my mother coming at me like a spider monkey hopped up on happy pills, tears of joy streaming down her face—I am sucked back into my childhood. Red-faced and mortified. I’m seventeen again. This is going to be the longest five days of my life.

I’m so different from my family in so many ways. I’m not better or worse. Just different. I come from a family rooted in the Catholic faith—the branch that believes it’s okay to skip Mass on Sunday because the Broncos are playing. As long as you confess on Wednesday for having a little too much hooch and shouting expletives at the TV screen in earshot of your children and your mother-in-law—all is forgiven. My family, mostly my mother’s side, is also ultra-conservative. Except for the swearing and the hooch. In that arena, they suddenly become a bunch of flaming liberals—slurring something about freedom of expression.

Anyway. I’m different. My political views are different. My religious views are different. My social views are different. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. I don’t eat at chain restaurants. The list is long.

We drove from the airport to my old neighborhood and I was amazed how much everything had changed. Wide open fields where groundhogs used to run free, and kids would play kickball—gone. The mom-and-pop sandwich shop where I used to hang out with my friends—gone. The streets my friends and I would cruise on Friday nights—belting out the words to “Sister Christian,” rebelling against itchy uniforms and teenage oppression—now made me feel claustrophobic. This place was now filled with trendy shopping centers, over-landscaped apartment complexes and outback-applebees-chilis-texas-roadhouse-macaroni-grill-brightly-colored-everything-tastes-the-same restaurants—as far as the blinded-by-neon eye could see.

My nostalgia was gone too. The familiarity of my youth was bulldozed and replaced by something out of a weird sci-fi movie. This wasn’t home anymore.

I spent the evening having dinner at TGI Friday’s with my parents, my aunt Connie and her son, Joe. Joe is thirty-three and just moved out of my aunt Connie’s basement—and the only thing he can talk about is his new truck and the ins and outs of workman’s comp. Just before my last cocktail arrives—my brother, who I haven’t seen in five years, walks through the door, loaded. Some things never change.

Sitting there watching my baby brother, now in his thirties, still struggle to cope with what I accepted a long time ago was painful. We did not choose the paths our parents had envisioned. I did not become an Ivy League attorney. He did not follow in my father’s military-career shoes. We both took Frost’s advice.

I revel in my separateness. My brother wallows in it.

I sat out on the porch with my mom and my aunt Connie that night, and enjoyed the cool Rocky Mountain air. I politely sat in the porch swing as these women lectured me about motherhood and raising kids and how I need to treat this “situation” with my daughter. Connie does love to give speeches.

I rocked back and forth, my feet not quite touching the ground—just like when I was a kid. And I looked up at the starry sky and thought of Diana. Her sweet face. How much she had become my friend. How cool it would be to hang out with her again. I missed her. And I sent her a message by way of the heavens.

“I promise. I will never make you feel like you’re seventeen—ever again.”

To be continued.