note to self

Something my grandmother would say when passing an extremely large cemetery:

Grandmother: Guess how many dead people are in there?

Me: umm three hundred (or some really random number)

Grandmother: Nope

Me: umm eight hundred (or some even more random number)

Grandmother: All of them! (with evil laughs)

We often ride down the highway in chaos. My mother is gossiping on her cell phone; she steers the car. The music from the radio clashes with the “kid songs” flourishing from my baby sister’s DVD from the backseat television. My younger sister hums songs from her airpods, and I am left in the middle of the racket, having to listen to every chuckle, hum, and Barney song. I try to start general conversation and usually talk about the random middle age man that drives beside us. I pretend like I know him. A yellow mini cooper passes us with two middle age guys in it and I begin.

“See Mom, he is on his way to Pennsylvania to his father’s funeral. Jack is his name. And see this here Jack, has been through a lot. His daddy was not a good natured man and often embarrassed him in front of his friends. You know, like point out how he didn’t have facial hair yet whenever his high school friends from the chess club would come over. For that reason Jack is now a very hairy man. He now has a long beard, mustache, and goatee as a matter fact. His father would often make him wash the dishes in front of his friends. He would make him wash dishes, which is not such of a manly chore, like say throwing out the garbage. Hint: the man sitting beside him is, in fact, his lover. Yet, wait mom… it gets better, he will tell his family that it is a close friend that works at the same company as he does. Yea, so they are now on the way to Mr. Embarrassing daddy’s funeral and he can’t wait to get there so he could walk into that church and sit in the front pew and stare at his dead father and pull out one of the hairs in his daddy’s mustache as payback before they close the casket. He cannot wait for this; he’s been planning it forever. He cannot wait.

Hint: that’s why he passed us.”

Once I am through with such great monologues like these, my mom just looks at me. She looks at me with one of those, “you are so weird” looks. The “you may need counseling” look. The “where did you come from?” look. Once I receive that blank face that says oh so many words, she tells me to be quiet.

I don’t like the quiet really. I like some ACTION, no boredom needed here. I’ll pass on silence. Silence makes me think. Silence makes me sad. I want to know what they’re thinking. I’m stuck in the car with zombies, zombies on super estrogen. So her ‘be quiet” usually leads to me asking a question that I know she wouldn’t answer such as permission to get a tattoo. We continue riding, Kristen, my youngest sister has fallen asleep by now, so I cut off the “I love you” song that Barney sings. I can finally hear the music clearly.

They don’t want to listen to me. I know they don’t so I try to think things in my head that will keep me from talking out loud. I think about that Jack that rode past us not too long ago, and about how hungry I am. We are on 85, heading north towards DC. It’s warm outside. I have the window cracked even though my mom says she hates the sound of the air rushing into the small crevice.

My mom steers with both hands with her cell phone on the dashboard as she occasionally changes the song on the radio. A tractor trailer is beside us carrying oil or something like that because it has the flammable sign on the tank. How tragic would it be if some deer would jump in front of the car now; yes in the middle of the day, and make us crash with the truck that would ignite the whole entire highway? I think Jack would be gone by then, he drives fast. I always try to see the truck driver in his side view mirror. Once I see him chewing on his gum, I lean back into the seat and relax. I try to relax; I can’t sit still. I fumble with my phone and put my feet on the dashboard knowing that my mother will tell me to take them down. I put my feet on the dashboard anyway, and then my mom tells me to put them down. I was just making sure I knew she was going to say that. I tell my mother, “I knew you were going to say that.”

The highway is easy moving, flowing like an express line in some small town grocery store. The road was making me sleepy. The sun’s warmth nestled me in its arms. My mother wanted me to stay up so that she would have someone to talk to. The trees race with our car on the sides of the highways, and the metal guardrails beam. We pass by a cemetery; a myriad of gravestones appear. There weren’t any flowers out, so I could tell that it hasn’t been visited recently.

“Look over there” I say, and then my mother turns her head to see.

“Yea, you know how many people are dead in there, right?”

“All of them”, we both say together.