The distance between tall stands of summer corn on my right and the creek bank at left, spans a mere two lanes as the car races toward my dream destination. At least it feels like racing, what with windows unfurled and hair dancing in a tangled mess around my face. The air is heavy with corn, manure, and the breath of a balmy July hanging over the asphalt.

Dappled patterns play across the windshield and my face as I move in and out of shadowy canopies lining the creek. My favorite among nature's umbrellas is the weeping willow; with her slender arms cascading down to water's edge in folding falls of foliage, ebbing and flowing against the summer breeze. I don't see it yet; when I do I will know I are almost there.

A few more miles to go, I extend an arm out the window and the rush blows it in wavy patterns; to and fro, undulating over and under. I cup my hand and stop the air, only for a moment, before she regains control and pushes me away. My skin tingles from the intangible assault. I wonder if I can touch a passing car, but become afraid to take the dare my mind so dangerously tosses upon my tongue. "What would happen if" I whisper to no one.

The car slows her assault on the asphalt, Macadam, as we call it here in the mountain valleys of my old haunts. No one has heard of Macadam in the southern tier where bastardized words succumb to the drawl. They also think it silly when I call Pine Creek, C-R-I-C-K. But that is what I have known and forever how it will cross my lips. As the car begins to roll forward I know just one more bantam bridge and then I will see my childhood willow and the mill stone by the mailbox that greets the drive and invites us in.

I love the signaling sound four tires make as rubber meets the gravely granules lining the drive. It is like the homespun popping and metallic pinging of popcorn beginning its eruption on the edges of a hot oiled pan. It is the cue my grandmother awaits; the signal to alight from her Readers Digest' in the living room where the grandfather clock rhythmically counts out the days. She has never missed greeting us at the backdoor or waving goodbye from the front.

As car doors slam upon our arrival I linger in my stretch, shut my eyes and breathe in the scenery. A local dairy cow bellows hello from a nearby pasture, the babbling brook that giddily tumbles to the crick gurgles her salutations, and the hickory tree drops a few Welcome Home' gifts to the ground; their smell is rotten, pungent, green and familiar. I am there

I am jarred from noctural concoctions by my self possessed hand waving frantically above my head. I am here, I am here, I am over hereit begs and pleads. As cobwebs roll back into the ceiling overhead I ruminate.

Cotton-headed, I roll over pulling comforts covers with me and remember she died five years ago, the grandfather clock along with her no longer counting out his days. The last time I truly traveled down that road I found it so disconcerting, the backdoor devoid of her smiling embrace. It had been years since my presence last helped her move from Readers Digest' reverie to arriving family. I still visit, but now only occassionally when my dreams allow and each wave hello is really a solemnifying goodbye until I truly arrive there; beyond memory's gatekeeper and tell her how much she meant to me.

Learn more about this author, Jennifer Bower.
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