Welcome to another week of life on the road. This week, we’re currently in Mississippi, wrapping things up and prepping to head to Nashville.
Aaron and I always have mixed feelings about coming home to Mississippi. There are many things we love about it, and many others that we do not.
For myself, when I’m headed home I get excited about what I’ve missed, but once I’m there, I remember what I didn’t. I get excited to spend time in a small town, and then overwhelmed by a feeling of claustrophobia. I can’t wait to spend time with my parents, and then remember all the little quirks that drive me crazy. I make a mental list of all the friends I want to catch up with, and then I end up opting to stay home with family 90 percent of the time.
But one thing we’ve unequivocally enjoyed since we’ve been here is not needing a map.
Oxford (my hometown, and also the college town where Aaron and I met) has changed a lot in the 10 years since we left. Growth, development, so many strip malls and new suburban neighborhoods - it’s hard to keep up. Not much is the same as we left it, and we no longer know where everything is.
Yet we find ourselves eschewing Google Maps. Instead of typing in the address of a new place to go—the first action we’d take in a new city—we now get directions the way our parents always have.
“Well, it’s out on Jackson Avenue, let’s see, you know where Applebee’s used to be that’s now a bank? It’s across the street.”
“Take the road you used to take to your friend Elizabeth’s house, before you get to the turn, there’s a whole new road there. So you follow it down until the first right, and *that’s* the street with the new pizza place.”
“No, they don’t live in town anymore, now they live, let’s see... Oh! You remember your second-grade assistant teacher? Well she was a Johnson, and her parents lived in that house on top of the hill. Mmm-hmm. So if you go to that house and take a left, and follow that road about half a mile, that’s where they live now. If you hit the farm with horses out front, you went too far.”
The mental map is infused with history—our own and that of our parents and probably their parents. That is, history and gossip, because there’s always some tidbit about why that family doesn’t live in that house anymore, and it usually involves a scandal.
(Quick side story: when a friend of mine moved to town in his mid-20s, my mom offered to drive him around to look for apartments and see the town. The result was a crash course, for him, in who lived where and who moved out when they got divorced and where the church pastor lived and when they made that road a one-way road even though the whole town was pissed about it. My friend was a bit overwhelmed, but hey, he was also entertained.)
The buildings and streets may change, but there’s always someone here to give us directions.
We came back to Mississippi to take care of some family needs. We already knew we’d be walking into a stressful and overwhelming few weeks.
But then, I found out that someone I grew up going to camp with passed away unexpectedly. I still don’t know what happened. But for the first time in over ten years, I found myself headed back to camp—the Episcopalian church camp I went to almost every summer as a kid, teen, and young adult—for the funeral of someone my own age.
What do you do with this? Who tells you how to handle any unexpected death, let alone that of someone with so much life left?
Camp is just over a two-hour drive from Oxford, and the funeral was at 10 am on a Monday, which meant starting the day around 6 am. Honestly, I was a little worried about it—I’d be alone, for well over four hours of driving in one day. I’ve been the weak driving link on this road trip, getting sleepy after ninety minutes or tapping out in heavy rain and driving through mountains. I thought maybe I wasn’t cut out for the long drives I used to do so easily.
I was wrong. Without Aaron in the car, I could listen to whatever I wanted. Yes, I did play the entire Hamilton soundtrack all the way through (I knew it would last the full length of the drive there and I wouldn’t have to mess with my phone or search for new music). I sang along a little, I tested myself on how much I still knew the lyrics. I tracked the road signs along I-55.
And I took in the view of such a familiar drive—the rolling nature of small hills, the green of the trees, the lingering early morning fog just above them.
How many times have I driven down this exact highway, past these exact trees that were probably planted before I was born? Too many to count.
I know exactly where I almost got pulled over by a cop (I didn’t, because another car got in their way and wouldn’t move, so they ended up pulling that car over instead).
I know where I’ve met up with friends at rest stops, meeting in the middle of the state between our northern and southern homes or colleges.
I recognized the gas station that used to be Stuckey’s, our favorite family stopping place on the way to camp, Louisiana, or pretty much anywhere south of us.
And I felt a little skip in my chest as I passed the “Velma Jackson High School” sign on Highway 51, the sign from my childhood that meant we were mere minutes away from arriving at camp for a week-long session we’d anticipated all year.
Driving by myself, listening to the exact music I wanted to listen to and following roads I know like the back of my hand, I didn’t get sleepy at all. I didn’t need Google Maps to tell me when I’d arrive or what the traffic was like. I knew which exit to take, not because of a map or a memorized number, but because it’s simply “the exit after Pickens.”
I knew where I was going, I knew where I was, and I knew when I’d get there.
And in the midst of taking care of family, coping with a sudden tragedy, and a future that, while exciting, is still so unknown, two hours and nine minutes of certainty was exactly what I needed.
What else is going on?
I took Aaron to Memphis for one night and told him he had to go see the ducks at the Peabody hotel the next morning (he’d never been to Memphis or heard of the ducks). I held down our table at the restaurant while he ran around the corner. He was, quite honestly, unimpressed.
Sometimes I look back at my last post to make sure I don’t recommend the same book or TV show twice in a row. But now, looking back, I’ve just realized that we’re behind on Schmigadoon! So this is my reminder, as well as yours, to catch up on this delightful show.
We watched all eight episodes of Jury Duty, a delightful and heartfelt show that’s a little bit The Truman Show and honestly hard to describe so just watch the trailer.
One of my favorite Substack writers, Anne Helen Petersen, wrote about the overwork culture in so many white-collar industries and hooo boy if I didn’t recognize so much of the advertising industry in this piece.
I also really enjoyed this piece, by Katie Hawkins-Gaar, about loving and taking care of yourself through all of life’s ups and downs. “The person you’re looking for is you.”