The Ride

The day we drove to Maryville took forever. I am not sure why - a friend of my Mother drove us and she kept getting lost.  It didn't bother me how long it took because I didn't want to go to Maryville anyway. I guess there are times when I should have been scared but I wasn’t. I can still remember that bizarre lack of feeling that somehow it hung low in the car that day as me and my four sisters meandered without end.  As it would have it, if I did not know how to feel, then my mother and her friend did not know how to navigate the roads of suburban Chicago.  What should have been a two hour drive, ballooned into an epic eight hour journey. Up until that day, I had never been away from my mother.  Being that I had always been a child glued to her side, I had never learned to fear abandonment.  My education in this area proved to be both quick and brutal after that day.

My father’s absence from the car may have been conspicuous to the outside world, but it was a reality that we had all came to grips with that previous November.  My father, a decorated Chicago policeman had died due to a hear attack, and complications from long standing ailments.  At 35, he was taken from us all too soon.  My father was always me and my sisters’ greatest advocate so it was telling that a mere nine months after his passing my mother, who typically placed her convenience at the center of her being made the decision to give us up.