The Long Way Home

MOM: Jessica… I need to get away for a little while.

ME: Where are you gonna go?

MOM: I don't know yet.

ME: Wherever the road takes you?

MOM:  Pretty much. Haha. You should come with me. We could go on a road trip. What do you think?

ME: Seriously? ….. okay!

MOM: Where do you want to go

ME: (jokingly) Hmmm… New York!

MOM: Really? …. Okay lets go!

Summer 2012.

            My mother and I and her GPS, who we named Helga, set out on a two week journey across the country.

            California to Arizona.

            Arizona to Utah.

            Zion National park was our first major scenic stop. Breath-taking. Giant rocks to the left, and right. I've always really appreciated fresh air, and blue skies. After doing some hiking and taking some tours of the park, we drove around to find a place to park. Perfect. We maneuvered our bodies around the natural skyscrapers and kept our eyes our for lizards. Lizard fishing had recently became a hobby of ours. All we needed was bamboo sticks and fishing line tied into a noose. Carefully inching our way to the scaly creatures, we caught and named the little guys. Then after reluctantly having to touch the lizards while avoiding threatening nibbles, we set them free. There was plenty of pavement ahead of us, so we popped in the car and pursued the road. In third grade, my teacher Mr. Stampe told the whole class about Four Corners Monument. Four states intersect at one point.

            Utah to Colorado to New Mexico to Arizona

It was part of the Navajo Nation. Ever since then, I wanted to visit the monument and begged and pleaded my mom to let us make a stop there. And we did. It was awesome. My mom and I took pictures of each other in four states at one time. Like a dream come true. We were a little too fascinated and spent a tad too long at the park and finally decided to leave and continue driving.

            Utah to Colorado

            Cortez. I didn’t like Cortez. We had to stop for a hotel because it was starting to get late and we figured we needed a bit of a break. Our hotel was scary. I walked into the room with my mom at my side and we set our stuff down and closed the door. Then my mom says, "I'm going to go have a cigarette." She left me in the room by myself. When I looked out the window to see if I could spot her, just to reassure myself I wasn’t alone, I saw that, standing up straight, my eyes were level to the ground. Our room was halfway underground. As I peered out the blinds, I noticed a man staring at me from outside, as if being underground wasn’t creepy enough. I dropped to the ground, heart pounding, and waited for my mom to return. The next morning, we were headed for the next state. To our dismay, we were caught in an awful rainstorm. Cars were traveling maybe five miles per hour, halfway buried in flood. No doubt, we were scared. We couldn’t see a half a mile in front of us. The only image repeating in my head through mine and my mom's laughter was the tornado scene in the Wizard of Oz. We were headed for Kansas so I was nervous, to say the least.

            Colorado to Kansas

            Miles of flat land, tractors in the distance, crops being tended to. Kansas was beautiful in the simplest way. After traveling through the back roads for a good while, we were hungry. Moosette's Café. I ordered a burger, and corn nuggets. The only way I could really describe corn nuggets is like fried balls of creamed corn. Different… and delicious.

            Kansas to Missouri.

            Missouri to Illinois.

            Illinois to Indiana.

            Indiana to Ohio.

            Our goal in Ohio was to rush through a visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. It was an incredible to see memorabilia from many of the inductees. My favorite to see was Jimi Hendrix. His drawings were displayed along with his guitars, psychedelic outfits and his family couch. Total immersion into the life and the fame that he had made me wish all the more that I grew up in that era. It was definitely a Jimi Hendrix Experience.

            Ohio to Pennsylvania.

            Dense, lush green everywhere you turn. Also, the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, my dad's favorite football team.

            Pennsylvania to New York.

            What a sight to see. Despite the many rude people in the area, New York was fantastic! We stayed in Queens with my mom's cousin but we got to see Times Square, Central Park, Wall Street. We walked and walked and walked for two days all around New York and I had never been so satisfied being so tired. My mom was born in Romania. She has taught me some of the language, culture and of course, the food. In Queens, we ended up stopping at a Romanian restaurant where I got to eat food I was somewhat familiar with and I got  to see my mom speak Romanian to the waitress. Rockefeller Center, World Trade Center Memorial, Empire State Building. Spectacular.

            New York to New Jersey.

            Did you know it is illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey? We didn’t.

            New Jersey to Delaware.

            Delaware to Maryland.

            I haven’t been there since I was almost four years old. I was born in Maryland. Silver Spring to be exact. We decided to take a little detour and visit our old house on Contee Rd. in Laurel. A little yellow house that I hardly remember. We wanted to see if possibly the current owners would let us take a walk through memory lane in the halls of their home. We knocked, we rang the bell, no one was there. We did ring the neighbor's bell. Yang. Now, I remember her. I grew up playing with her daughters, Alison and Amanda. She remembered us too and invited us in for a few minutes to catch up after almost twelve long years. Mike, our other former neighbor, also lived in his same house, two doors down from Yang. He had new wife and a beautiful baby daughter. And Miller, my dog, Lucky's, brother they looked just alike. But he had fleas like crazy. The next hotel we had stopped at, I counted all of the flea bites I got from that visit. Seventeen. It was wildly uncomfortable!

            Maryland to Virginia.

            Virginia to Tennessee.

            Sweltering heat. As soon as we stepped out of the car in Nashville, we were both equally dripping with sweat in seconds. The live country music on the streets got my mom and I dancing, laughing, bonding. We had a wonderful time. We stopped in Memphis too. Listened to some live jazz and we drowned in the culture. There was a barbeque joint on Beale St., Blues City Café, and our stomachs were hungry and intrigued. As our mouths filled with saliva, we waited on barbeque ribs, coleslaw, baked beans, and fries. All of which were darn worth the wait. I was not surprised that it was some of the best barbeque I'd ever had since Memphis is pretty know for their barbeque.

            Tennessee to Alabama.

            Alabama to Mississippi.

            Mississippi to Louisiana.

            There is no way I could ever forget the food there. Cracklins, boudin, gumbo. The Creole and Cajun spices sent my taste buds on their own trip.

            Louisiana to Texas.

            The only thing I remember about Texas was that  the roads were hectic.

            Texas to New Mexico.

            New Mexico to Arizona.

            Arizona to California.

            After a two week journey together, the bond my mom and I shared had never been stronger. It was a wonderful and well needed getaway. We never laughed more, and we only had one, very short lived argument, which was quite the feat. Then we were back home. Back to Victorville. Back to reality.

More Than Just Words

            Stephen King said, "The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them." I put my most important thoughts on paper and even though words never entirely express how I'm truly feeling, I've never felt more complete than with a pen and a paper.

            Eighth grade. That’s when inspiration first struck. It was a poster of sixteen different butterflies on the wall in my classroom that caught my attention. I don’t think I had ever been more fascinated with the colors, shapes, and sizes of butterflies. It was at that time that I first felt the strong motivation to express myself and be creative and tell a nice story. I saw the poster and a fire ignited in my body. And I started to write.

            After that, I wrote a poem about trusting in your self and being your own friend. The praise I got for that piece encouraged the hell out of me and it was especially meaningful because it was some of my deepest thoughts that I expressed. Belief. Confidence. Independence. I had written something beautiful that others appreciated and they pushed me to do more. Life was seen through new eyes after that. Discovering that way of expression had changed me. My deepest fears and thoughts are what I wrote. The things I could never talk to anyone about. Somehow it felt safer to have it written down, like no one could take those feelings away from me because they were recorded in ink. Every experience became a new addition to my table of contents, and the list grew and grew. The first time I fell in love, I spun words on the page so effortlessly. My heart was thriving and I felt like if I had people read it, I wanted them to feel as good as I felt. I was happy. My first heartbreak, and second heartbreak, and third filled the lines with tears. If I had people read it, I wanted them to feel as sad as I felt. I wanted sympathy and comfort; sometimes my expressions were cries for help.

            Poetry had been the best outlet for me to not keep in my emotions. My mom always tried to get me to talk when I had stuff on my mind. "It’s not good to keep things bottled up," she'd say. I'd reply, "Well, that’s why I write."

           I was in high school when my parents split up. I felt my situation was so unique, no one could ever relate. At the time, I had been writing for the school newspaper and I was urged to compose an article about divorce in families to remind students that they were not alone, and it's okay to not understand. A student wrote me a letter thanking me for the write. She felt like she wasn’t the only one going through a tough time; there were others out there like her. In retrospect, it really helped the both of us get through a painful time. This made me realize my purpose on this Earth, to change lives through my writing, to make a difference,

            There was a time when I had stopped writing. Life became a blur and getting through the day became so difficult. My inspiration disappeared. I was broken. It was as if I was a flower vase that someone had dropped and put off sweeping up the shards of smooth glass. The one thing that always made me feel better when I struggled, my escape, I had no motivation to do. In a time where I needed to find myself, I lost my magnifying glass. My mind became a prison - I was trapped and quiet. A pen and paper was the driving force that bailed me out. One night, I was feeling powerful, hopeful,  like happiness was a possibility again. So I started to write.

            Writing to me is the most special thing to share; it’s a part of yourself you are giving to someone, and to me, that is beautiful and I am lucky to be involved in something so impactful. Everyone wants a voice. Everyone desires to be heard. Stephen King summed it up best when he said, "That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."