How to Quit Feeling Sorry for Yourself

I drove a total seven hours to get there and it should only take five. Much of it in rain so hard I could barely see the tail lights in front of me. I took one wrong turn on a drive I could do blindfolded any other day, and I only took that turn because I was so rattled by a phone call. And I knew the phone call would come. One day. The phone call about how he didn't love me "that way." Just not that day, just not in the pouring rain with two little girls who kept crossing the center line of the backseat and whining and fighting and asking if the rain would stop and asking if we were there yet. And so whether my tears or the rain blurred the road made no difference. The noise from the backseat and the back of my head was a tug-of-war between reality and the fictional dialogue I should have had... a mix of all the stuff I wish I'd said to him interspersed with pleas to "get along, girls, we'll be there soon."

Even after we drove up the drive, even after I saw my dad come down those steps in the blue glow of my headlights, even after we fell out of the car and into our pajamas and into the bed... all of us into one bed, me and the girls, I couldn't sleep. I lay there under my Daddy's roof listening to the rain and thinking. About lots of things. Mostly about all the things that have gone wrong lately. I wonder if I will ever be in a decent relationship. I wonder as I lay there if I will ever get it right. I wonder if I have ever done anything right. The tears rolled quietly from the corners of my eyes and into my hair and onto my pillow. It is raining outside, and down my face, and in my head.

I am back in my own house tonight. I am looking at the pictures I made. There they are, standing at the edge of a Louisiana watermelon patch, bathed in the setting sun, two things I've done right. I realize I am in a good relationship: I'm a mom. The tears roll down my face again. But this time, it's good.

Home

I'm going home. Louisiana home. Family reunion home. I'll be among the people I came from. I'll be looking at their faces and seeing parts of my own. I'll be hugging the old gently and grabbing the young by their middles to swing them around and tease them about school and sports and how much they've changed. I'll eat homegrown this and homebaked that until I burst.

My dad will ask me how I'm doing now that I'm on my own at least a dozen times. With that serious look on his face. I'll say, "fine, Daddy." I'll sit by him on the couch and we'll find a John Wayne movie on tv if we're lucky. "Shane" if we're luckier. We'll say all the good parts out loud together and everyone else will abandon the living room.

I haven't wanted to go home for a while. But something has turned in me. Now it's a longing. I see each familiar mile between here and there flicking by in my mind already. I see the interstate give way to the highway and the highway turns just so and there is that curve by the fairgrounds and then the long driveway. I see my dad come out of the house and down the steps of the porch. He's been looking for us. I'm home in my mind. Now I just have to get there.