Roads Paved in Gold

Look back to those years I awoke each morning, disoriented, cramped, and curled up against a wood-paneled wall, thin body upon a thinner mattress, grasping for a sense of time and place through sleep’s lifting veil. Dim sun peeked through plastic blinds, taunting me to tear them open in search of answer to that persistent, daily question: what place is this? But always strange desert sand and cactus answered, seen at 55 mph, and blurring together into an unfamiliar palette of khaki browns, greens, and grays; and, always, the great deserts stretched ahead without end, scarred, and cut in two by cracked, sun-worn asphalt upon which the ancient motor home rumbled.

A red-headed family inside the motor home, jumbling along: a young boy and girl, sprawled across bunk beds, whose grim-faced father’s coarse hands gripped the wheel, and the mother, studying a map in the large passenger’s captain chair; a map that spoke of foreign roads and charted an aimless course.

It was the years we traded southern California’s Mojave Desert for, first, Mexico’s Baja, then Sonora, and eventually Chihuahua deserts; swapping Joshua trees for saguaros and creosote; English for stilted Spanish; schooling for life experience. The years we let go of familiar suburban comforts, where routine reigned and mapped an unwavering, predictable life, to instead struggle through churning, dusty seas in search of adventure.

Or perhaps we were running, not searching; there was never an explanation to us children. Instead, packing was done with urgency and our removal from school in haste. There was little time for questions, so I imagined glittering, golden roads and surrendered myself to my mother’s stories of roaring crowds surrounding violent bull rings, cracking whips, and the thumping clop, clop of horses mounted by picadores.

But Mexico was not all bull fights and excitement. Day upon day passed in the aging motor home, who lumbered along in the heat. When keys turned in its ignition, all our breath held; a piercing whine would scream out, seeping a thick tension into the air. We willed the engine to end its obstinate click, click, click, and roar to life.

And it always came to life – with a lamb-like bleat, never quite a lion’s roar - and started its long, squealing hum. I’d lay my face upon the floor’s matted carpet and let its vibrations pass along my body and carry me through the desert. At times the hum was a comfort, a gentle lullaby that allowed me to drift along lazily through never ending days; at worst, the hum was tortuous, like a gnat buzzing in your face needing persistent swatting; but, always, it was there, an ever-present, background noise that felt more like a symphony.

Imagine, if you will, a pale, freckled boy spread across the old motor home’s floor, his mind running wild as his hand-me-down magic carpet sails him above the Sonoran Desert. It sings a threatening hymn that promises to swallow him whole, but only if he opens his eyes. Rocks pelt the underside of the carpet and instead it’s armor now and the boy a knight; he fights valiantly, kicking thin arms and legs, a medieval picador jousting a rival in a weaving dance; but he’s thwarted, his horse tripping in a pothole. The battlefield disappears with the humming hymn, it’s threat realized, and is replaced by the long, shuddering exhale of the motor home coming to rest at the side of the road.

Think, now, of his mother, who’s grown weary of roadside breakdowns, looking back from her captain’s chair. With a threat in her eyes, she hunts for a victim, passing over his sister, until her gaze falls upon him. He lies motionless on the carpet, imitating the black panther at the Guadalajara zoo; ready to pounce.

But those boyish fantasies were cast aside when her eyes found mine. With flushed cheeks, I’d choke down any protests and resume my role of reluctant apprentice.

Out in the desert, I’d find my father bent over the hood, where smoke escaped and dissipated into an often-cloudless sky. The smell of gas would linger in the air, reminiscent of my motorbike back home, and I’d feel struck each time by a longing pang.

That longing never stung in quite the same way that my father’s famous words did, though. ‘Watch and anticipate my needs’, his only instructions, always spoken to me in a dead calm voice. Was it a riddle, a warning, a command? My young mind, so often taken by imagination, reeled at the possibilities.

But the answer turned out to be simple.

After so many times of shrugging off his words on the side of some road and, instead, slinking through the desert plucking seedpods from velvet mesquite and saluting sentinel saguaros, I had grown bored and began to feel childish. I realized that all the small games I played and fantasies I concocted weren't worth living under the cloud of my father's disappointment; it was time to put them aside.

So, I took his words literally and watched him. I traced the sweat flowing down the lines of his face in rivers with my eyes; I glanced at the alien parts under the hood and watched him squint; I kept track of his eyes searching the toolbox until they settled upon a tool. I grew bolder and asked questions, ‘What is this part’, ‘Why that tool’, until the parts were familiar to me; until I could anticipate, with just his look at a certain piece, what he needed and why, and placed it in his hand before he knew he needed it.

Watching and watching until magic carpets were forgotten, the hum silenced, and the day came when we returned to the motor home, the map was thrust into my hands and captain’s chair cleared; that was when I learned that a journey can't start until some things are left behind. The last pieces of my young self were scattered along the highways and now I could find my adventure and, eventually, who I would become. But I never stopped looking for golden roads.