It surprises me, still, to find out new things about my family members, like I cannot imagine that they had lives before I had a life. In my car with a brand new battery, as I drove her home from the Fruitville Lowe’s, my grandmother on my mother’s side recalled to me the details, the ones she chose or the only ones she remembered,

and the human forgetfulness of memory in stories like this one is so important to me,

of her and Giddi’s cross-country road trip in the early days of their move to America.

They drove a car, their car that came over in the belly of the ship with them, marked on the back by some symbol meant to communicate their foreignness to American police and also to those who lived in the mobile home parks.

She laughed as she told this part of the trip — the part where the couple woke without a clue that they were in someone’s backyard. She said something like

We arrived after dark

and woke the next morning amongst strangers who offered us coffee and something to eat. We told them we were foreign and that helped a little bit

and when I left that afternoon, I asked Tatenda if I could roll down the windows and he said yes just as I had already started doing so. I watched a strangely familiar world move past. I couldn’t tell you what was remarkable about this place other than the feeling I had been there before.

And I am reminded of that one road trip in Auckland — with that stranger I trusted. It had been only my first weekend there. Maybe my second. We showed up to her parents place on the coast after dark and I woke up to a view I could have never imagined. And we walked in citrus groves, benefactors of tremendous luck to have landed, in the dark, exactly there and nowhere else.

What’s that thing people say about the impossibility of dreaming a dream of a face you’ve never seen?

Sethi and Giddi found themselves in Long Beach on this trip, having driven PCH, my grandmother remembered. I’m not sure whether they were drinking in those days but I haven’t seem my Muslim grandfather touch a bottle in my lifetime and

I do love to bring awareness to the human forgetfulness of memory in stories like this and

she didn’t say anything about who was or was not drinking what but she did say, with a smile, is,

We pitched a very large tent and I trusted another stranger and we got to dancing

and we danced and danced and then we sat on a rock somewhere away from the small crowd and talked and then I trusted you so easily again. We danced for a lot longer and my heart split open and poured out but was it really my heart? It was a lot of words, I remember a lot of words. But I also remember that we left a lot of space between words as well –

language barriers, you know?

The story continues,

I have told our story as if it was love — I think I want someone to corroborate my account of what happened but all there is here is me. And as my days go on I am sure only that all there is here is me. I can say whatever I want and it’s tempting to lie.

She paused,

I hoped she would carry on truthfully,

It’s very tempting to lie and say that I know for sure that you feel the same and that you want me to move with you and take my big adventure, too,

that you think it could work for quite a long while and

that you think I’m the most beautiful and special girl you’ve ever encountered and you’d be silly to let me go on wondering whether you’re even interested at all in Trying To make it work here in this big and new America

And I know, now, that it was a big move for them — across a big ocean. And that, from where I now comfortably sit, they have made it work for quite a long while. And the move was for one person’s work, really. I know, now, that a big move is possible for two people, sure. And that for these two people, only one had a career to pursue. And the other had dreams to leave behind, set aside, grieve. New dreams to live into, new dreams to choose. To get up each morning and choose and choose and choose. On this road trip, before kids were born, I imagine life in partnership felt some way that it never again felt after kids were born.

And I don’t think forgetfulness has anything at all to do with not hearing that part of the story.

She softly says to me,

Promise me, no matter what happens, not to lie. Be sure to tell them how excruciating it was to wait and wait and not know and wait and wait. Be honest about what you did with the negative space, the waiting. Whatever affliction this may be — this discomfort in not knowing — however you reject it, know that it is real and do not skip over that part when you tell the story from the other side, so many years later from this day.

My Sethi’s family,

the one I do not know,

lived their life on a farm in Slovenia. And this quick promise to a Muslim from Egypt — this adventure to America wasn’t part of the original plan, as far as I know but

what are plans

and, original in respect to what, exactly, anyway?

“You know that it’s not because I don’t want to be here. I cannot have you thinking that it’s because I don’t want to be here.”

As is easily imaginable, the news of an early departure from the homestead was not met with enthusiasm, was regarded as rather rash, but was a risk worth taking

someone deemed it worthy, at least.

and I wonder why. And how sure of themselves, exactly, were they?

And the story of this trip of theirs is the start of a season of wondering about the length of a life

the lucky length of a life, to be more specific

or maybe

the length of a lucky life.

Recently, a man named Mike told me that his one piece of advice to his 24-year-old self would be to know that life is actually long. Mike, born and raised of The Okavango Delta, reflected in front of my very eyes. He told me, thoughtfully, that his 24 was marked by impulsivity and frivolity with money and energy. It took him until maybe 27, he reckons, to realize that life is actually long. That there are things worth planning, trips to take, people to take care of, etc.

That there is Goodness in the work itself, perhaps.

So, no, it is not, “always be thinking one step ahead,” and it’s not “plan each day to the minute,” but rather,

“don’t be surprised when life catches up with you and you feel a sense of wondering what on earth you are going to do with all this time.”

I think this whole life-is-long thing is why people start doing things like Sober October or giving up meat for lent or skipping dessert or buying fixer-uppers in unemployment, spending time gardening while you wait to hear back from the jobs you’ve applied for or investing or gambling or or or

Because we are adapting to a new pace, here. The threats we face are entirely new and the chances we will live a long while are high and the question becomes

what will I do?

And what about tomorrow?

And then tomorrow’s tomorrow...?

May this chapter of mine, Ours, be marked by patience; may We experience each passing moment as a testament to the length of a lucky life. May We look intently and listen out for the signs of flying time and also time dragging its feet.

This road trip, as each trip, ends with plans for the next trip — another opportunity to see something new, meet some new version of themselves and each other, collect stories of some new land to tell to friends and strangers, to test the limits of foreign roads.

It was the promise of time together, the potential and the mystery and all the rest, that tied the two together, after all. The planning and the hoping anchored them; the assumption of a long life and something to look forward to — they became doers because if they remained mere dreamers, their connection to one another and the promise of a family had no way to realize or solidify from a milky mixture into salt crystals at the bottom of the beaker. Adventurers make plans and they hope for the best.

Ah, yes, I used to think that adventure existed in every person. And now I’m coming to think that an adventurer, a traveler, is a type of person

one who does not fear the cruel complexity of hope.

or one who feels the fear and hopes anyway.

My Sethi was once an adventurer — she, whether she remembers it this way I am not sure, had to find a way to create a home within herself, to justify her adventures, her movements, her choices to herself first. And then to others, as well.

It is a muscle, after all, the impulse to say yes to the unknown, to just

see what happens

and muscles atrophy without practice.

She said, to herself or to him, (I’m not sure)

With you, there, I was a character whose story will be told. I see this version of myself as someone separate from who I am when my eyes are the only eyes. Does a further closeness exist? Could I press my face through glass to yours?

Until You Know Better

Listen to The Greeting Committee’s “Get Over It”

Dance to Tash Sultana’s “Jungle”

Great Artists Steal

If you still have the chance, ask your grandparents about themselves — I’m certain there’s something interesting to find out