Oh, say: can you see? By the dusk’s waning light? What so proudly we’d hailed as holiday spent with family – TheInLaws – had devolved over the course of fifteen or twenty hours (estimated) from a low-key Independence Day with family to a marathon trial of endurance… but at last (at long, long last) the event was drawing to a close. We’d come, we’d seen, and we’d been thoroughly conquered by endless hours of idle conversation and chasing the children around the yard and warm sunshine (a rarity, in this wettest of all early New England summers) and half-decent beers (that we’d brought with us) and a half-decent grilled dinner (that we’d cooked, using their ingredients) and then hosing the dirt off the kids and cleaning up the kitchen and grill and beginning the long, slow process of disengaging from grandparental clutches to return to our home, our native land.
In other words: it’d been a long day. And while I’d passed hour after hour after hour either throwing half-deflated playground balls at my offspring or debating the relative merits of the Sox/Pats/Celts with my father-in-law with relative ease… as the longest day drew to a close, I found my ease being joined by an unwelcome “un.” Maybe it was the direct exposure to so much sunshine. Maybe it was the two beers I drank over the course of the long afternoon (that’s right: two. I debated going for more, but decided to pace myself instead.). Maybe it was the half glass of cheap pinot I sipped with dinner. Maybe it was the cheap “steak” (it should have come with an –umm) that my FIL had picked up and I’d attempted to massage, marinate and magic back to some form of flavorful life. Maybe it was the fact that I’d had a light salad for lunch before leaving our house that day, and my body was reacting the unnatural presence of vegetable matter.
The point being: as we packed up and began strapping the kids into their car seats and preparing for the long odyssey back to Castle TwoBusy, I found my low-level, generalized and not at all unusual feeling of malaise suddenly begin to evolve into something more. Excusing myself from the driveway, where all parties had gathered to bid farewell and a happy birthday to America, I ducked inside to avail myself of my in-laws’ facilities… and found that I was rapidly descending into a period of actual, legitimate unease.
When I emerged a few minutes later, shaken but not stirred, I felt a light sheen of sweat on my forehead. Something… wasn’t right. I didn’t know what, but something was awry. And all. I. Wanted. Was. To. Be. Home.
Quickly, I stepped into the driver’s seat, shut the door, waved goodbye… and we were off. Homeward bound. Where my thought’s escapin’. Where my music’s playin’. Where my bathroom and new bed lay waitin’ silently for meeeeeee.
A few minutes into the drive, TheWife asked if I was okay. Apparently, I was being even quieter than usual. “I’m not feeling great,” I said. “Okay,” she replied. “Let me know if you need me to drive.”
I shook my head. No need. This was an easy drive – three sections of fifteen minutes on three different highways, and we’d be home. Quick. Easy. Painless. No worries. I trusted that she’d take my silence and stoicism as testimony to my immense verility and strength of character, and pressed the gas a bit harder to accentuate my point.
Fifteen minutes in, as we rode the offramp from highway number one to highway number two, I found that I had begun sighing. Not in the sense of “I am filled with ennui” sighing, or “I am so disappointed that we didn’t spend more time at TheInLaws’ house” sighing, or “Gosh, hard to believe that yet another Independence Day is drawing to a close” sighing, but in the sense of “there’s some kind of enormous pressure building inside of me, and this sigh is an attempt to somehow release that pressure before things devolved into a Mount Saint Helens scenario.”
TheWife eyed me warily. “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” I responded. “Just want to get home.” I said it in tight-lipped style, like a young Clint Eastwood. A much less tall, handsome and rich Clint Eastwood, but a young Clint Eastwood nonetheless. Okay, maybe not quite Clint Eastwood. Not Clint Howard, either. I was a new breed of Clint. A heavily sighing, July 4th-celebrating Clint of uncertain heritage and moral composition hurtling down highway number two at terrifying speed. Squinting, in true Clint style. Blocking out the sun as it dropped low on the horizon behind me. Focusing on what lay ahead. Homehomehome.
So many times, we’d taken this road, and always been surprised by how quickly the ride had taken us from TheInLaws to our own home. My children, having grown out of their propensity toward falling asleep as soon as the vehicle set in motion, were boisterous in the back, following the already-visible moon across the horizon, reciting the names and numbers of the highways as this quick road grew suddenly slower and infinitely longer before me.
The moments stretched, and I felt myself doing the same. I imagined the Hindenberg, in the last moments as it approached Lakewood, pregnant with history and ready to burst into new immortality. My sighing grew steadier and more constant, but no longer offered relief. My expectations were evolving mile by mile, from “This is not a problem” to “I think it’ll be fine” to “As soon as I get home” to “I don’t know if we’re gonna make it.”
Offramp became onramp, and we merged onto highway number three. Fifteen minutes until home. So very close.
The debate raged in my mind for two exits, then at the third I turned off. Close to where TheWife had once worked. “There’s a McDonald’s up ahead,” she said. I took her at her word, not thinking too clearly, focused with all the will I had in this world on the dual tasks of moving the car foward safely… and keeping myself in check. Focus. Focus. Focus. The road slowed. The miles stretched.
And then, suddenly, there it was: the promised McDonald’s. We’d made it. And as I pulled into the parking lot, I realized: This wasn’t going to end well. As I pulled into a spot in the mostly-empty lot, I felt something terrible rise inside of me, and I struggled to put the car into park.
I was reaching for the door handle when I felt it begin to surge.
I clamped my jaws shut.
Stepped out of the car.
Didn’t even look at the restaurant, only two dozen feet away.
Stepped six feet in front of me, to the immaculately manicured grass along the parking lot’s edge. So carefully tended. So lush and green, in the fading daylight.
And Mount Saint Helens erupted.
(cue stock footage: seismographs going ballistic, mountainsides exploding out and up and away with untold force, Pierce Brosnan fleeing for his life, my children rapt and incredulous inside the car as they watched me lose control as never before…)
Across Boston, families gathered together to see the rocket’s red glare. Bombs bursting in the air. Explosions in the sky giving way to wonder and amazement and memories being made, then and there and forever. A holiday to remember. And in the parking lot of a suburban McDonald’s, less than fifteen minutes from our home, my wife and children sat in wonder and amazement, memories being made then and there and forever, and together watched me get violently sick across the grass.
Glory, glory. Hallelujah.