Day Thirteen: Roads to Somewhere

Lu isn’t about me,
but all fiction contains real bits, like on Page 1 when Lu is heading back home
and comparing her current drive to the Sunday drives of her childhood:

­It was easier to get
lost on these roads than to get somewhere. I knew this from experience, thanks
to the Sunday family drives of my childhood. I was a bit more expectant then,
with my nose to the glass and my imagination wondering where Dad would land us
on that day.

Nose-to-glass, metaphorically, is how I am on any drive –
even routes I’ve driven dozens of times. My favorite scenes take three forms:
flat horizons of big sky, old houses with porches, and roads that curve to where
I can’t see.

Such roads (particularly those with overhanging trees) raise
the same questions as train crossings – ones that don’t need answers. But what
if I did veer off the route to answer one? I have sometimes (with the requisite
crank up of the radio and crank down of the window). The reality of the hidden road
has never quite matched the scene in my mind, but I’ve never regretted doing it
– not even that one time the car skidded into a ditch and I had to leverage
those tire-replacing skills my dad taught me when I was a little girl.

Just kidding. That didn’t happen. My dad never taught me how to replace a tire, and the one time I ditched was when I tried to reverse out of my friends’ circular driveway. I paid for a tow that day. But … should any of these or other misfortunes befall me on my detours … I’d like to think I’d still be happy to have answered the question rather than always leaving them to my imagination.

Feeling like you just busted into the middle of a conversation? Maybe you did. Let me take you to Day One of this series so you can begin at the beginning.