the river

ben and i are leaving for san diego in a few short days. i cannot wait to drive across this country. my life is on pause for this and it's a hard thing to explain to people. they say you can't live someone else's dream. and i think that's true, but i think you can hold hands with it; just until it feels better about leaving everything its known up till now.

this trip is the hand on the back of the bike. it is the afternoon you trusted enough to pedal long after your sibling let go.

we spend the night before we leave looking at the full moon from the balcony deck of our parent's small apartment. we talk about excitement, about fear, and expectations. i am surprised to find that most of ben's concerns are about mom and dad.
"i'm afraid that, like, i'll come back and i'll feel the same, but mom and dad will have aged and ..."
he trails off and i know his thought.
"i still feel young and i want to do things and what if i come back and they're ... older?"
his ever-optimistic heart keeps him from saying "too old." i am enough of a cynic to add it in my head, but, thank God, am i still not hard enough to be unaffected by it. i assure him that he'll change and slow too, but it is little comfort to him. and i realize he is his mother: eternally thinking and genuinely feeling twenty-one and untouchable. she never admits when she's sick and if and when she finally does, she can't understand it. like when ben broke his collar bone and he couldn't accept the limits it placed on him. it was the first time i think either of us realized he was getting older and things might have to change. things like playing hard, playing rough, and tackling guys younger than him. his body is slowly, but surely failing him. and when you face the breakdown of a twenty-seven year old body, you certainly have to face the breakdown of fifty-five and fifty-seven year old bodies. the creeping mortality of the ones we love most begins to sink and settle like sands in the riverbad we are ever trying to stir with the rapids of youth. rivers, turn streams, turn dry beds. and it is so hard to branch and run when your source is ebbing.

take the picture now

so i drove across country with my brother. the word good comes to mind a lot when i think of how to describe it. i don't mean "that icecream was good." i mean God created the stars, and the sky, and the expanse of waters that covered the earth "good."
it's a misused word. and journeys like this one are often misinterpreted experiences. i feel like everyone who asks about the trip expects me to say it was life changing. but i keep thinking about something royce mentioned once: how experiences, or trips across country, or even overseas don't really change you, not for long, unless you have a foundation to stand on when you come home.
i don't think instant change is impossible, but i do think it's a rare and precious mercy from God. because most change is slow and hard, and is the culmination of a lot of experiences, a lot of traveled miles, and a lot of ordinary days. they creep in quietly until one day you just realize that you see things differently; that you do things differently; that you're not obsessed with changing anymore because you are changed.
i've ruined a lot of trips by expecting them to reveal a round earth where all before was flat. but i'm trying not to anymore. i'm trying not to guess the defining moments or how it ends. it just ruins the middle of this really good story. and i'm trying to let my travels be part of a foundation that builds a floor sturdy enough to stand on while all that has happened begins to move me.