Taking The Wheel

Every night I drove the car.

Starless midnight skies loomed above as green highway lamp-posts and their distraction obscured the moon and its friends.

These were not the nights to be looking up at stars.

These were the nights to pay attention, to take charge, and to save my world.

.

We used to look at the stars every other night.

Mama taught me the constellations, the planets, and the materials that made it all up.

As a child, I was enveloped with astronomy and physics.

I was enthralled with the idea of space and everything it could be - but I never wanted to go there. I would’ve been perfectly happy sitting on the floor pointing at pictures and scribbling in astronomy workbooks as my mom told me everything she knew about space.

We have not sat on the floor in some time.

.

I can’t remember if there were many cars, or none at all.

It feels like it could’ve been both, somehow.

(Maybe dreams are influenced by quantum theory, and it really was both.)

Despite the number or lack of obstacles, the tension in my shoulders was the same.

My breaths short while uncertainty crept into the edges of everything.

Unprepared.

With lamp posts passing as often as they did, I still couldn’t see a thing.

I ran us off the highway.

The car seemed to fly for a moment, giving the illusion of peaceful safety: though we hadn’t yet felt the force of metal on metal and rubber against earth.

When we crashed, we crashed into nothing.

The car had stopped on an empty silent space. Its bumper was mangled and dented.

Steam rose from underneath the hood as I slid my stiff fingers down the steering wheel in a daze.

Did I press the brakes, or did we run out of gas?

.

My eyes opened.

Back in my bed, I remembered how to breath.

I’d lay there for a while, letting my mind phase back into reality as the sun’s light filtered in over our cottage-cheese ceiling and cast shadows over my light pink bedroom walls.

The sun was one of the five stars I could still name. I’d forgotten how to find the other planets and constellations.

It was a sad thought, but it wasn’t like I’d be going there.

I didn’t want to go anywhere.

Everything that mattered most to me - my family, my friends, my life - was here.

So the feeling shouldn’t have been so strong, but I found myself almost begging to remember.

Promising.

Pressing.

Racking my brain for what it was supposed to keep there.

.

Every night I crashed.

With five most dearly beloved in tow, just behind and beside of me in their seats;

I crashed.

Sometimes I sat in the driver’s seat.

Sometimes I rode shotgun.

Wherever I sat, I always drove.

I could never manage to start the engine, I could never turn it off.

I just drove.

What a lie.

I just crashed.

.

Often in the morning I would wake up and start connecting stucco dots as the room got brighter. That ceiling was covered in constellations that I knew the names of - names that changed every morning. Nicely, that habit never changed. In my toddler bed, my parents’ bed, the bunk bed; I connected ceiling speckles, pretending they were stars.

As the years wore on and dreams became weary, I’d stare at them for a minute and then roll over onto my side without paying them another thought. Every second spent lying there, every moment used trying to think of what to say or do or feel or write was sucked away into the past before I knew they were gone.

Every lost constellation terrified me.

.

Some nights.. I didn’t crash.

But on those nights, I never stopped.

It was an eternal act of juggling the unwieldy steering wheel

between my hands and hers.

Leaning over into the driver’s seat, I wouldn’t step over to try the pedals.

My legs would’ve been too short.

For two people driving a one-driver car; I think we did a good job of it, though I never felt the peace of success.

There was no conclusion.

It was the climactic middle of a story with no end,

an on-going action,

an object in motion.

And, it would stay that way.

.

Before bed I’d go stargazing on the front steps of the porch, craning my head to look all the way up. I’d lifted my hands up behind my neck to keep it from aching and support it in the unnatural posture. The sliver of moon was peeking through the vast darkness, just enough to be seen. My eyes drifted on to what we call the north star, mars, in its red glimmer and the big dipper. I remembered the bear and its tail along the dipper’s handle.

I realized I’d heard their names in my head as my eye passed them over.

Perhaps I knew more that I’d thought.. But I had to look up the rest of the constellations - and those didn’t fill me the same as the bear and mars did.

I needed to hold that pencil between my imprecise toddler fingers; her hand gliding through my hair as we spoke and to hear laughter as she brushed the bangs away from my face.

I needed to remember.. I needed to hold her. I needed every single piece of us.

.

My last drive was different for the fact that I was on my own.

Beloves indoors, my footsteps echoed silently on the pavement.

I climbed into the front seat and backed out of the parking lot onto the highway.

Time moved so swiftly and slowly all at once.

In the span of a moment, I drove for miles.

My eyes watched the mirrors, tracking the surrounding cars and the road we all drove along.

My hands gripped the wheel, shifting course with the slightest motion.

My feet reached the pedals for the first time, gentle as they pulsed.

In the depths of my mind, warnings rang.

Something called me back.

In another moment, the darkness shifted into daylight.

I turned onto the opposing road and was on my way to the parking lot.

Though I was the only one in the car, she was there in the passenger seat speaking to me.

We talked, we laughed, we sang. By myself… I was not alone.

The drive was contentedly fun in a way that those midnight rides never had been.

The next moment, I was there.

The highway moved on without me.

The parking lot retained its still, silent air.

I pulled our car into a space.

I pressed the brakes.

The rumbling engine went silent as the key turned back into my hand.

I had no idea at the time that this drive had been both my last, and my first.

Stepping out onto the grey pavement, I closed the door with a click. The next thing I noticed was that my family was there surrounding me with kind, smiling faces.

We turned toward the building and walked inside together.

.

One breath after another was calm, filling up the depths and edges of my lungs quietly. Behind closed eyes I saw us yester-year and beyond with deep blue eyes and sun-lit smiles. I saw long auburn waves and flowers planted, experiments done and hypothesis tested. I felt arms around me, songs hummed and written - even those I couldn’t hum myself, I knew.

Eyes opened and I was staring up at that old cottage cheese ceiling while the light hit the walls.

I created constellations that morning with a smile gracing my lips, a gentle warmth in my chest and a peace sealing itself within.

I couldn’t speak for the stars or anything else, but through whatever trouble and change was to come: we were going to be okay.