Road

 

Roads I have known…

The road in front of my house when I was five, a cul-de-sac, a safe place for small ones. We weren’t allowed to leave the driveway – and we didn’t.

The road in front of my grandma’s house – a dangerous highway full of speeding cars and semi-trucks, some carrying harvest to the local markets and warehouses: watermelon, corn, apples. My grandmother would walk along the highway during the slow times and pick up what the trucks had dropped. My brother and I would sit on the stone walls on either side of the driveway and wave to people driving by on any Saturday that the weather was nice and if my mother allowed it. People would honk and wave and once in a wonderful while a semi would pull his airhorn. Now that was success!

The road in front of our house called Maple Street where I ran and tripped and fell and broke a glass jar of ants and other bugs and bled all over everything, the street we walked to get to school, to get to church, to walk around the block and see what there was to see and maybe meet up with friends.

The road that ran past our trailer park called National Road, busy and dangerous, with a rich history of travels and ancient motels.

The road in front of my house in Phoenix that had a streetlight which came on about an hour after sunset, just at the right time to let me enjoy the sunset. Even though I couldn’t really see the sun, I could enjoy the beautiful colors, magenta, burnt orange, blood red, sunflower yellow, deep blue and violet. I sat on the curb for hours thinking, praying, sometimes dreaming. I knew every crack in that pavement.

The crazy dirt road on the ranch whose owner we did not know, but my mom said it was okay for us to take it to look for hieroglyphs on the rock face. We didn’t find ancient art, but we did get stuck crossing an old dry creek bed, my dad digging around the bumpers, my mom speechless with anger, my brother and I exploring the desert until it got too dark (we found a great horned toad and it really squirted blood out his eyes at us). We were rescued a few hours later, in the dark, by an old ranch hand driving his 4WD back home. He was not happy. Neither was his dog.

The road through the woods that led to the campsite where we spent vacation, brisk air filled with the aroma of pine and rich earth.

The road out in South Dakota during a torrential rainstorm, moving slow because the roads were washing away and cars passing needed to wait for each other because only one lane was left.

The lonely road in Montana as we searched for the ghost town, on someone’s ranch, that my parents thought it would be fun to camp next to. I don’t remember it being fun.

The road home after a long day at work, relaxing and breathing deep to encourage my tight muscles to relax.

The road I got lost on looking for a place with a name but roads with no names and I ended up 20 miles away in a city that, thankfully, I knew my way around. The story never got written.

The road that leads to the place I want to go.

The road less taken.

The road to Jesus.

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