I recently completed a cross-country road trip, from San Diego, California to where my parents live, and where I grew up, in New Jersey. When first packing up my worn down 2003 Jeep Liberty, space was scarce. I was packing up six quick months of life next to a couple dozen books I picked up along the way and two friends who were there for the journey. It took us about twenty minutes to get it all to fit in the best possible way, still allowing us to see in front of us and behind us at the same time.
Road trips are tiring events. Every new place is a new occassion, an event to be celebrated, a new land to be explored. Utah to Colorado to Oklahoma to Tenessee, criss crossing a handful of states in between, we seemed to be riding our own momentum, or being pulled, or whats the difference. We were chugging along, at our own pace, in our own way.
Nearly every night was spent on a couch or a pullout sofa or a soft spot on the floor. Some of it was done the old fashioned way, through friends of friends and second cousins and vague casual acquaintances. But some were even more new age, people we met through couchsurfing.com, social networking for hippies and bohemians and nomads galore. Random strangers would welcome us into their homes, befriend us, party with us, share with us.
After sixty years of the suburban American dream, my generational peers are beginning to take down the white picket fences. There exist fewer real boundaries between strangers. Sometimes I would sleep on one of these strangers’ sofas or nestled into a giant bean bag chair and I’d feel more at home then I had felt in a long time.
Somewhere around Atlanta, we got to be really good at packing, unpacking, and re-packing the car. I think we got the whole process down to about 90 seconds flat. We each had our prescribed roles, we each knew where everything fit, what had to be done. As we bounced from place to place the car was becoming our home, the packing and unpacking and repacking our upkeep. We had a system, we had a refuge, we had a place to call our own.
Spending so much time in the car momentarily took me back to my high school years, the days when my entire life fit neatly in the trunk of my car. I lived about 45 minutes from school, so at least two days a week I would try and fineigle a friend to let me sleep at their house, always keeping some spare clothes and toiletries. The car was the first thing that felt truly MINE, something I could hold onto, something that couldn’t get away from me.
Where along the way did my parents’ house stop being my home? I guess I always assumed it was when I went to college, but I think once I got the car I was well on my way. The car was where I brought women, where I ate, where I smoked. It was where I could be alone, free from interruption and noise.
But I can’t recall ever being truly happy living out of that rusty Jetta that always smelled like crayons. My insistence on having a place to call mine had blinded me from finding a place where I wanted to be.
We were quite adamant about not deciding our next destination until the day before we were to leave. The adventurousness of such a proposition excited us. For a couple of suburban products crushed by the yolk of over-parenting, to NOT have a plan is about as counter-culture as it gets. Each time we sat down to look at a map, the prospect of tomorrow was a mystery, the possibility it may yield the true gift.
The truth is, while the car may have been our place of refuge, it wasn’t the place that made us happy. In fact, by the end, the four silver doors signified a disgusted familiarity, like a family member who always gets on your nerves but they are family and you can’t shake or change or get rid of family. It was our stops that kept us going, the places we saw, the amazing people we met. They showered us with love and with kindness and with empathy and interest and smiles and laughter and more and more love. Whether it was Pat the ski bum in Utah or Dave the air force pilot in Oklahoma or the anarchists in Memphis or the hippies in Charleston or the college students in Boulder, Ann Arbor, Atlanta, State College and beyond, they were pulling us, closer and closer towards our goals, to our destinations, closer and closer and closer to home.
It is a matter of days now before I leave for the Peace Corps, a 27 month journey to Ukraine as a Youth Development volunteer. The first question people always ask me is how I am feeling; nervous? apprehensive? scared? Yet the only emotion I can truly feel is that feeling you get when you are on the precipice of something big, the excitement on the edge of the cliff or the curve of the ride. It is as if you are driving on the long open planes of Arizona or Wyoming or Kansas or Arkansas and a city begins to emerge on the horizon, the wonder such a sight holds, the possibility it brings.
Ukraine will be a long way from where I grew up. But I grew up in a place that embraced love and kindness and empathy and interest and smiles and laughter and more and more love. I grew up in a place that taught me to share myself and those values with the world. I grew up in a good place, a beautiful place, a homely place.
And now here I am, all grown up, ready to embark on the journey of a lifetime? Am I scared? I have no fear. Am I nervous? I shall not quiver. I will be 5,000 miles away from the place where I grew up, but my Home is always with me.
