There are certain things you never thought you would miss.
After moving to the city, I grew accustomed to trains, buses, and bikes. There were a few times I took the trip home to use the car, but the loss of my old constant didn’t become apparent till fall of last year.
I had come back to the south side to see my family and decided to stay the night. After dinner I found myself in the car, feeling around for the lights, trying to remember what I do next. Instincts came back and I pulled around the corner.
After about twenty minutes of aimless driving, I found myself somewhere familiar.
The drive between Beverly and Orland Park takes about twenty-five minutes at night. I made this drive at least four times during the week, and three times on the weekends.
Back and forth, there, and back, over and over.
Sounds tedious, but it became second nature to me. Some nights I would take different ways back for a change in pace, but the feeling was always the same.
No matter how good or bad my night was,
no matter what happened,
who I did or didn’t see,
what was said or wasn’t said,
I had that drive to equalize.
Long tree-hugged roads with the dashboard luminous in the quiet darkness of the interior. This was my time. Time for me to recap, rethink, reorganize my thoughts – While still trying to make it home in time for curfew.
When I first wrote 908, it didn’t have a title or much of a meaning. I sat down wanting to write with a picture in my head and ended up with an idea of something I had almost forgotten about. Not until I read it over again to write up an intro did I realize that I had subconsciously written about these exact nights.
My life in the city is very different from my past life at home, even though its only twenty-some minutes away. When I return to Orland for whatever reason, I find myself driving past houses where friends used to live and feeling the emptiness inside them. The people are missing but the memories are all still there. Summer and Fall bring on the biggest onsets of flashbacks and I’m tricked because of the familiar views, mixed with sameness of the air.
Sometimes I forget when I am.
When I drive down those same roads I become paralyzed with nostalgia and it causes me to feel saddened with memories and a longing to go back.
Then I pick up the highway, drive down I-94, park the car and walk up the stairs-back to my new life.
I realize that I no longer miss the past, but am grateful for everything in it, down to the smallest things,
like car rides.