Finding Gwendolyn

Go on a road trip with your elders and you’re guaranteed to get lost, but you might also end up finding yourself. I remember past road trips with Donavan, my husband. We were a little younger. We used to laugh together while he drove in circles around an empty parking lot trying to calibrate the compass in his truck. He always did this before the start of each journey. Our first two children were lucky to also share the experience, but days of puppy love are long gone now. Three screaming, fighting children in and road trips have become a thread of memory trying to hold our marriage together.

Don leaves for his office early, and he stays there late. I feel responsible and confused, responsible for turning his life upside down, but confused as to why I should feel that way in the first place.

Now when I think of road trips I imagine myself and Don trying to find ourselves again in the sunset years after we’ve managed to stick this out to raise our children together. Now when I think of road trips I feel like I’m just an existence, not living, artificially intelligent, because life has become robotic.

 I go to work, clock in, clock out. I get home tired with the children but they are hungry and so am I. On this occasion they decide it isn’t a McDonald’s evening, they want a home-cooked meal. Don is working late, again. I make dinner. The children eat in the living room and hog the remote so I wait until it’s their bedtime to have my own dinner with a glass of wine. I put my feet up on the coffee table and the dinner plate in my lap. I go on Netflix, find my series and after a ravenous gouging down I fall asleep, half an hour in. I wake up in the sofa. I get up and go to bed where I find Donavan. His empty dinner plate is on the bedside table. I look at him lying face down on his stomach, sleeping like a log and I can’t help but reminisce before turning the lights off,  my last road trip was six years ago. Our youngest is six.

I’m tired mentally and physically. Somehow it doesn’t feel like thirty seven it feels like seventy inside my body. Will I even get there? Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling I ask myself, “Should I tell him or ask him?”

Aunt Carol is a survivor. Three rounds of aggressive chemotherapy followed by major surgery are now crossed off her list. She invited her sisters Beth and Erica, her nephew, Beth’s son Franklin as the driver and oddly, me, Gwendolyn on this road trip. Where do I fit in?

When it comes to people like Aunt Carol, we tend to want to lock them up in a house or room when they have spent their entire lives coiling themselves into a spring to start living. I’m talking about those who’ve earned an unfiltered tongue, the night owls, those who carry around a bucket list, the I’mthedesignateddrivers, and the weneedtofindarestroomlikerightnows. They say they’ve travelled this route several times in their twenties, but they haven’t done it in thirty nine years.

Aunt Carol was a guest of mine last Christmas, before her diagnosis. We had a one-on-one until 2 am after dinner out on the balcony. We talked about all the people inside my house: guests, husbands, husbands cheating, and spoiled children like mine.

 At one point she paused, looked up at the stars, sighed and said, “Do you realize how far away they are? If you know how big they are you’ll understand how far away they must be to seem so small…three wise men and Christmas,” then she pointed towards the sky and said, “Our ancestors used stars to find their way, and even with a God damn compass you and I will still get lost. Sometimes I feel like the more things we find to make life easier, the more we lose the purpose of living. I miss this.”

I heard something in her voice I could relate to and told her, “Honestly Aunt Carol, I can do this more often if you like. We can have more dinners like this, Don and I work we can afford to cater to the family, and it doesn’t have to be just Christmas, let me talk to him,”

“No, that’s not what I’m getting at my niece. I miss people interacting with each other like what we are doing now. When we were your age the phone at home never rang during Christmas because everyone was already there,” she said.

 I’m used to it. My children all have smart phones and laptops. My husband is a software engineer. Today you can be in a house full of people and still feel like you live alone, even at Christmas, so I said, “I understand perfectly. We are on the same page but for different reasons.”

 There you have it, the window I opened for Aunt Carol to invite me to go on this road trip.  

Donavan will be staying home with the children, ‘have fun’ is all he says on the way in, no goodbye kiss and no ‘I love you’. We understand life. He’s not enthused to be home surrounded by noisy children at the end of a long day. I’m happy for him.

  It’s 5am and we are moving!

‘In one hundred meters, turn right’ that’s the GPS. Aunt Carol, annoyed, flashes her hands while shouting at our digital navigator, “Shut up. Frank has been driving for ten minutes.”

So Frank turns it off. No cell phones are ringing. Aunt Carol and Aunt Beth are exercising their jaws in the back. Aunt Erica is staring out into darkness in silence on the other side.

“Shit, I think I left my pills!” Aunt Beth exclaims.

Aunt Carol needed to hear that, “Wait a minute,” she says, “let me see if I have mine. Frank, stop the van.”

Cousin Frank pulls over to the embankment and while we wait on them to find their pills, he occasionally gives me a side eye, I’m riding shotgun beside him. Makes sense, being the same age we can relate to each other. Frank knows we don’t fit in. He understands his reason for being there, but not mine.

“Do you know where we’re going?” he asks.

I burst out laughing and so does he. We catch up, I haven’t seen Frank in years, and we talk until an aw-inspiring silence fills the minivan. Everyone is savoring the amazing sunrise and the warmth of it on our faces. It heralds the journey. We can finally see through the lightly tinted windows in all directions.

“Are we ready now?” Frank asks.

“Yes, we have them, you can drive,” Aunt Beth replies, and so the journey begins.

Mountains and Bridges

The first hour takes us up the side of the mountain. This path gives us a spectacular panorama of the coastline on a perfect day. Frank has to keep his eyes in front, the terrain is rugged. Edges of road are sudden and steep, but looking out, I feel like an albatross floating above the ocean.

Frank catches me smiling, “You have no idea where we are going. Aren’t you worried?” he asks.

“Frankie, you take us there and I’ll help you out and take us home, I promise. Your wife didn’t make it on the list either. Did Aunt Carol design this too?” I ask, and Frankie’s smile disappears.

“Candace and I are divorced. It’s been three years,” he says.

My cousin really changed. He gained at least fifty pounds since I saw him just before his wedding. He has a paunch stomach and folds on the back of his neck. This is clearly a sensitive topic for him so I tell him, “I’m sorry cousin. Candace has lost out.”

He shrugs it off, “How’s Donavan?” he asks.

When I burst out laughing again it takes a while for him to catch on, “Are you travelling the same path?” he asks.

 By this nobody is paying attention to where we are going. Aunts Carol, Beth and Erica are having their own conversation in the back but Frank eventually stops at the head of a bridge my aunts do not recognize when asked.

“Carol, I don’t recall this bridge,” Aunt Erica says.

Aunt Beth chimes in, “Neither do I,”

We all pass the look along until it gets back to Frank who gets blamed as the driver. I encourage Aunt Carol to give technology a try but alas there is no GPS out here in the middle of nowhere, none of our devices can pick up a signal. Our minivan has a built in compass but we are deep and can no longer see the coast. All we see are mountains, their peaks and steep valleys.

Aunt Carol taps Frank on the shoulder, “Press on,” she says, and all three in the back start yapping again as if nothing happened.

Frank and I are confused but there were no forks in the road, no signs, and I don’t remember passing any turns either. This has to be the only way forward so we press on, on a prayer.

“Gwen, what if we get lost out here with these three?” Frank whispers.

I whisper back, “I’ll consider that a good scenario since they are likely to have survival skills we don’t.”

Another twenty minutes driving and we see the northern coastline. Finally, if we can see it we can get to it.

Our first stop is Burger King, that’s where we have breakfast. Our second stop is Margaritaville, Ocho Rios. We decide to walk there. It is blisteringly hot outside, we hurry inside to order drinks and take seats at the bar.

Frank orders Coca Cola, Aunt Carol disapproves and orders him a shot to go with it, “You don’t have to behave today Frankie. All these sexy women aren’t drinking soda.”

She downs a few shots herself. I sense mischief in the DJ who glances intermittently at Aunt Carol. He must have heard aunt and plays the remix to the Macarena. Aunt Carol catapults on to the dance floor dragging Cousin Frank with her. The DJ is laughing. The look in his eye tells me he did this on purpose. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard myself.

Aunt Carol and Frank are the only two out there. Aunt doesn’t know how to do the Macarena, she doesn’t. Frank felt sorry for her, I think, and that is the only reason why he is doing it, I know it. Frank does the teddy bear version. Aunt Carol is doing the neuropathy version.

Aunts Beth and Erica throw caution out the window and give us the Icanshakemybooty version. I fear hip replacements are coming but this is working out for Frank. Everyone else is getting up. Nobody cares. Frank throws his head back in euphoric laughter when a pretty young thing stands in front of him doing the flawless version of the Macarena, and then another one gave him the sandwich. This DJ isn’t letting this pass. He puts the song on repeat and slides out onto the dance floor with us. He’s never done this before. I can see it in his eyes while he dances with Aunt Beth. Everyone lets go today.

I don’t believe it, but I go out there, and we laugh our asses off shaking them vivaciously to the Macarena mid-morning! We are drinking rum and Coca Cola mid-morning! We are in need of a designated driver mid-morning! I ask myself how the hell did we all get to this point in life, but I love it! I stop drinking but keep shaking. This is the most fun I’ve had in years, nothing I ever expected to have with a geriatric crowd, my divorced cousin and a fun-loving disk jockey.

There is a man whispering something into Aunt Erica’s ear and she likes what he is saying. I think he is telling her how to do the dance properly since she is now doing it properly in front of him and they are shaking their hips in tandem with each other.

Why waste this moment. Here’s my version. Rotate your entire body. Don’t make eye contact with anybody. Don’t break your rhythm. Don’t try to figure out who is behind you finding your rhythm. Sweat, breathe, and laugh to the sound of laughter behind you. Change direction. Appreciate that part of the song which says ‘I’m not trying to seduce you’. I feel the clock rewinding, years of my life rewinding with it. I go as far back as the day I met Don. Will he remember?

I call him Don.

He asks, “Who’s Don?” so I stop dancing.

I turn around and tell him, “This was fun. Thank you so much,” with a smile, and return to the bar where I watch Frankie, Aunts Beth, Carol and Erica and find joy in their entertainment.

Aunt Carol gets a hug from the DJ who skittles back to control of his music so he can slow it down a little.

We are hungry again. I’m the designated driver. For lunch we go for pizza. Aunt Beth storms into the restroom while we order. We take it with us to eat at the falls. We eat in the van and then head in to climb the falls. Aunt Carol doesn’t climb with the rest of us. We climb hand-in-hand to the top and do so again and again, and spend two hours winding down here, but it’s time for us to begin the journey home. Who knew there were so few hours in a day, I’m used to much longer ones.

On the way back we make a wrong turn going over the day’s events. Frank alerts us to the fact that we should have crossed a bridge by now, and we end up tracing our wheels back at least four miles to get to the right road leading across the bridge in the night.

 I get home around 9pm and suggest to Frank that everyone should overnight at my house just to make sure they are all sober enough to drive home the following day and they all agree.

I meet Don at the front door. He is smiling in anticipation, “How was it?” he asks.

I find myself struggling to come up with an explanation when all he wants is an honest answer. The best I can come up with is, “I wish you could have been there honey.”

I end up staring at the ceiling again for the whole night.

In the morning I know the children will wake up after me. Maybe Don next, everyone else will be hung over.

To my surprise, Don wakes up beside me and asks me, again, “So, how was it?”

I’ve felt nervous before but never like this. Honestly I don’t know what to tell him, so I close my eyes. In a minute I’m about to tell him the truth because I’ve never lied to him before.

The sound of my name startles me, “Gwen, come on, I didn’t get to enjoy it, so tell me,” he says with a smile his dentist would be proud of.

I choose another path in my underwear, finding that special song on my phone in the bed beside me, putting it on repeat before standing upright. Closing my eyes I find that same place in Margaritaville. Don is right there, he moves like clockwork. When I open my eyes my husband is thunderstruck. He already dragged himself up to the headboard. He doesn’t blink. Gaze from hungry eyes caress my thighs and hips. He wants to exhale so I turn around giving him full view of what he so desperately wants to see and he exhales.

“Oh wow, wow, wow!”

That’s all I need to hear. I haven’t heard that in a long time and tell him, “If Aunt Carol can do it so can we, come on.”

We have our own version. I feel him, body and soul: the hair on his chest and abdomen, the beard tickling the back of my neck, veins bulging in his arms, warm hands following the contours of my body. To hear him whisper, ‘You are still so fucking sexy’, enters my body like an aphrodisiac. Playful romp merges into slow, easy grind, a rhythm inside a rhythm, a pulse inside a pulse. Love heat radiates his lips. My skin is burning, he exhales and I catch fire.

I call him, “Don.”

He answers, “Yes, show me.”

To hold on you must let go. I find Don the way I lost him. How can I doubt this moment?

The song plays. We don’t hear it, dancing to our own conversational music, “I love you so much,” he whispers.

Our children are awake now. They beat down the door saying, “Mom we are hungry.”

I tell them I’ll be out in a minute.

 Don beat me to it wielding me around, “Gwen, nothing happened, I swear. There is an intern at the office, nothing happened. I tried to get her attention. I’m so sorry, please forgive me. You are the love of my life,” he says with tears in his eyes.

 Need I confess? “I danced with him. I didn’t even know his name. Don, I love you.”

He is in shock. What have we done? Nothing yet but Don grips my arms, and then cups my face in loving tender affection, “I’ll be home early from now on, I Promise. Nothing happened, I swear.” He says.

Donavan, the love of my life, I’ve gotten lost searching for him. I find him the same way thought I lost him and he finds me the way I find him, the way I’ve found myself.