A little creative non-fiction that I am finally ready to share ... amazing how much has happened in the span of four months! Life is full of surprises ....
I admit that it’s beautiful, but he wants me to say more. He is glancing at me expectantly from the corner of his eye. “Can you believe it? No one billboard! Have you seen one stinkin’ billboard?”
“Not a one,” I reply shaking my head slowly as I unwrap one of the Brisket sandwiches his mother sent along with us on our pit stop to Boston. I place it on the center console before unwrapping my own. I open the bag of chips and offer him a napkin. “Here. Take this." I say, shaking it in his face. I look back at Isaac, but he is still asleep in his car seat. I put his peanut butter and jelly back into the bag for now.
“Now, that is blue, huh?” He is pointing through the windshield at the sky. “No smog. Just clear blue sky.” And then he whistles the way men in old movies do when a pretty woman walks by them. Only when he does it, it sounds more like the sound a firecracker makes right before it explodes.
I drop my hands in my lap nearly knocking my sandwich to the floorboard. “Aaron, I have seen blue skies before. Can we just eat?”
I feel him looking at me. I point to the road on which I want him to keep his eyes, and only when I see his head turned back to the North, do I begin eating my lunch.
My mother calls it love. The way his enjoyment of life is heightened by mine. “It’s sweeeet,” she says. On the flipside, as in all marriages in which both member of the union care what the other thinks and feels, our happiness can be hampered by the other’s distaste for something we love. I am still bothered by the fact that I cannot cook with mushrooms unless I am the only one eating. Plus, the stakes are a bit higher for Aaron this time and he really wants us to be happy because we are all here because of him—uprooted. His two-year old son who loves the beach, his nanny, and picking fresh oranges off the tree everyday with daddy when he has returned from work. His wife carrying a high-risk pregnancy around like a goldfish in a bowl that threatens to spill its contents and lose the fish with any false move. An aging and overweight Labrador retriever whose flight cost more than all of ours put together. But he is happily embarking on a new career path that promises to be filled with shiny new faces to greet, interesting things to learn, and exactly one-third the salary to which we have grown accustomed. “But you will see. The cost of living is much less in New Hampshire. We aren’t going to be taxed to death like in California.”
Isaac is stirring in the back. I quickly snatch up the remnants of our meal and stuff them away into bag. I jab a juice box with a straw and turn to tend to my son, whose eyes are wide open and fixed on the view from his window along the highway. His mouth is forming a slow smile. “Look, Mama. A forest.”
“That’s right,” I say. “It is a forest.” To prepare him for the move, I cut pictures of trees out of magazines and pasted them on poster board. “This is where you are going to live soon,” I said enthusiastically. My friends who had taken sabbaticals with small children assured me that if I was optimistic, he would be optimistic too.
He shakes his head at my offer of food and drink. He yawns, stretches, then looks back out through the window. “A forest,” he whispers.
Aaron’s voice cuts in as he turns toward Isaac, shouting over the engine and windshield wiper and right in my ear, “Where is the graffiti? Where are all the people? Where are all the Jack-in-the-boxes and Taco Bells?” I roll my eyes, thinking as if Isaac can understand these questions that are only designed to remind me, yet again, how much nicer it is supposed to be here.
“It’s all gone!” Isaac shouts. Aaron and I look at each other, and despite my efforts to stop at a simple smile, we both release a thunderclap of laughter. Isaac, pleased with himself, laughs too, then repeats himself with even more emphasis, “It’s ALL gone!” Several minutes pass before our combined laughter settles and fades into sporadic snorts and chuckles.
They say that kids will keep you honest, and it’s true. Even I have to admit that it is beautiful here. “That’s right,” I say. “It is all gone. It is all trees now.” I enjoy the lightness of mood that has taken over the small space of our car. Aaron reaches across to pat my belly.
“How you doin’ in there little one?” he asks.
I see a sign for our exit up ahead and warn Aaron. He sits upright, readjusts the seat belt over his shoulder and places both hands back on the wheel. Within a few moments, we are off the highway and making our way to the hotel, which will be our temporary home until we find a place to settle in for the year.
But plaid flannel, especially red plaid flannel, is where I draw the line. I am not a lumberjack. I promptly told my friend while I was still in California something along the lines of "not just no, but hell no."