1/365

It's the first day of 2010. Otherwise known as "the future". And I spent my first day of "the future" in a car on roads. Roads that brought me back home. From my home. It's as confusing as it sounds. I've never been able to wrap my head around Nashville as my home. But I feel like an imposter calling Sterling, Kansas my home too. It's like I've got all roots and no branches back there. What used to be my whole world has somehow found a way to continue on without me. The hometown newspaper found somebody else to take pictures and write stories. The church found somebody else to play piano on Sunday mornings. My family somehow manages to make a complete circle with their hands around the dinner table every night. All without me. Imagine that. I guess the fabric of a small town is build on one big collective family. A family that takes their neighbor food when they're sick. A family that cheers for the hometown team. A family that mourns the loss of anyone that passes. All things that I haven't done so much of in the last 8 years. So I feel like an imposter. But as I pull into the city limits of Nashville, and I see the glow of a skyline that obstructs my view of the sky and an interstate system that provides a speed a little too fast for a Sunday drive, I feel like a stranger. Neither really fit me like a glove anymore.

But the road in-between feels so good. In the years that I've been driving back and forth between TN & KS I've found a refuge in those 850 miles. There's something about looking out your window and not being within eyesight of anything you know. THere's something about the miles behind you that make you feel tired. And there's something about the miles ahead that give you hope. A hope that makes me think about where I'm going in real life everytime I make that drive. It used to be a college girl with an iPod and a cell phone she could only use after 9pm. So she'd drive a little too fast and turn the music up way too loud. Then it was a girl in love with a man who would drive for her. And there would be no music. But talking about life and love and all the years before they knew each other. And then it was a husband and wife (husband still doing all the driving) dreaming about where they'd be in a year...in 5 years....in 20 years. And remembering the days when life with each other wasn't always as beautiful. But yesterday it was a girl with her best friend and their husbands. And as we experienced those 850 miles together I couldn't help but think that there are a few less miles ahead and a few more miles behind than there used to be. And that made me feel right at home.