What Goes on in Morgan's Mind During Unendurably Long Car Rides on Overcast Days

I love the weight within seemingly spontaneous moments.
We drove the long ten hours down to Nashville today—cornfield folded on cornfield curled up to another cornfield—to meet another family. Normally we have driven a much longer trip to North Carolina, where they live, summers to the beach. Filled with the typical bickering and “are we there yets?” and singing to Beatles and shouting in the back seat when I poked my brothers… but now it’s different; we are all older I suppose. Each family member with his own ipod in his own seat. When was the last time we touched each other?
The trip, a long drive for all of us, means more than mere geographic movement for my parents, but returning to their past pre-children life—to the small, traditionally-southern town of Mount Caramel, consisting of a tiny collection of log-cabin style houses, one small Baptist church, and a diner with the self-declared best fried chicken south of the Mason Dixon line… and the Watsons. Every year we drive down, and every year as I grow a discover more glimpses of my parents’ past, which I think is good for me at this time; in the midst of this whirlwind semester of placing myself in the world, the solid finality my family past which has brought me here is a comfort and bears a new sort of significance to me now.
I love the weight within seemingly spontaneous moments.
My parents fell in love at their senior prom; each dating separate people, my dad was dubbed king and my mom queen. Dating for a few years after—these same college years through which I move now—they married young and moved to North Carolina, where my Dad was randomly assigned for residency. One night my Dad stayed late at the hospital and ran into Stan Watson. Instant best friends, my parents and the Watsons creates this simple sort of shared small town life, young married couples in the prime of life, dirt poor but getting by together, sharing recipes and raising lab puppies together. One day my dad got a call from his brother asking him to start a practice with him in Peoria, so my parents packed up and drove up and away from these million memories they had made with the Watsons. But they still lived lives laid side by side for the past 30 years; our families have been indistinguishably intertwined, Ben for a while falling half in love with Claire, their eldest daughter, I writing letters constantly to Annie, and always mailing birthday and Christmas presents back and forth.
I love the weight within seemingly spontaneous moments.
One day I ran into some acquaintances I thought were pretty cool, and ended up playing Oregon Trail on Fischer lawn and smashing cake into one of their faces. That one evening led into some more fun times, which led into some close relationships, which led into a deep and accepting community which has acted as such an instrument of healing and growth in my life. What if someone else had been prom queen at Washington High School in 1981? What if my Dad had been assigned somewhere else for residency? What if my Dad had not worked late and met Stan? What if we had never moved back to Peoria? What if Ben had married Claire? What if someone had eaten all of the cake before we got to the kitchen? Life is out of control and beyond my hands which seek to pick and choose and decide. But I think the trick to living within this whirlwind of causes and effects is in learning to love every random moment as it approaches and each messy memory as it races away.
I love the weight within apparently random moments. And how looking at the set of spontaneous circumstances which extend infinitely behind me makes my fear of embracing the uncertainty of the present seem suddenly insignificant.