This Should've Posted Much Earlier

I'm in the front seat of Malinda's car. She's driving. Her husband Theo and their dogs Lovey and Eureka are in the back. We've done this once before, at Christmas, when I felt so lost that I couldn't enjoy the novelty of the canines or even the company of my friends. Spring is here now, I think, and I feel like I'm finally appreciating the little things again.

More of my road trips--more than with other friends, my family, or significant others--have been with Malinda. I still remember standing in the rain outside her house the first time we went to visit Kim at Tech, long before I knew I'd spend five years in the New River Valley. We decided to skip school and leave early. College was a whole different world in 2002, and Kim was wearing pajamas when we got there and it was still raining and for the first time it really occured to me that there was something after Harrisonburg.

And there was. And it's been more than six years since I graduated from high school but I still get nervous when I'm on my way there. It's nothing novel, nothing I haven't seen before, not like rushing over sand dunes in North Carolina or exploring small seaside towns--there's one with an abandoned church--in California. I don't get excited because there's so much I don't want from there, so much that made me unhappy, but today it occurs to me that the sky is wide open and we've passed a few glassy lakes with water interrupted only by the gentle breeze and the past is a long way away. There are so many adventures to be had and some of them are small adventures to see family on holiday weekends and some are big like moving across the country without any real plan but either way there's almost no place I'd rather be than in the front of a car with the highway sprawled out in front of me, great tunes on the radio, fantastic friends, and good dogs panting softly near my ear.