Cincinnati doesn't seem far (when it's not the destination)
On being on the road again, among other things
I love a road trip.
As a kid, they held a certain mystique - my family was small, just me and my parents, and they’re older, so we didn’t do cliche family vacations to amusement parks or camping. But, once every summer, I’d load up McDonald’s Halloween happy meal buckets with craft supplies and books and stuffed animals, climb into the backseat of whatever vehicle my dad was borrowing from whatever dealership he was working at at the time, and we’d head north, to the bustling metropolis… of Buffalo, New York. As I got a little older, we’d really wild out, and go on up to Toronto for the following night or two.
To a sheltered kid from Erie, Pennsylvania, that shit felt infinite.
It blew little Mer’s mind that we could get in the car, close off ourselves from the responsibilities of life for a few hours, and then get to exist somewhere else for a long weekend.
I don’t keep it secret that stuff got really difficult for me when I was in college - my family all but fell apart, shit that I’ll unpack here properly, someday - and alongside that, I went from sheltered to well and truly stuck. The trifecta of no car, no money, and no ability to do things for myself… the experience is something I wouldn’t wish on anybody, but at least it’s given me a hell of a lot of perspective, now. Thankfully, when I moved in with my now-husband back in 2015, we combined our small but disposable income with a “why not do the thing?” attitude and… well, I spend a lot of time on the road, these days.
I was given a lot of time to spend reflecting on all of this, recently. Thanks to the routing of Mike Campbell’s July tour (and Hollye B’s radio station gig the following week), I put something like 2,500 miles on my beloved neon yellow Honda Civic over the course of three weeks - the majority of those from criss-crossing the great state of Ohio. In those hours on the road, I finally had the time to give the past versions of me the grace they deserved - a trade-in of sorts from the crafts and activity books that filled the road trips of my childhood.
One of the things that always struck me as a kid was how far every destination felt. Time stood still in the car, entire days would be lost because We Were Going For a Drive. “We’re leaving for Buffalo today,” my mom would tell everyone she could.
109 miles.
That’s the distance from my parents’ home to the lobby of the hotel we’d always stay at.
109 miles, with a lengthy break most-of-the-way there at the Angola rest area, to get McDonald’s fries and spend time watching cars pass by on the thruway from the pedestrian overpass.
This isn’t a post about road trip length, about how I’ll do 600 miles in a day now without second thought, though, not really.
On something like my fourth time crossing Ohio last week, I voice-texted my best friend that Cincinnati didn’t seem so far when it wasn’t the destination (and then immediately saved it as a note to start this post). She’s been along for the proverbial (and literal) ride for years now, and remembers as well as I do that just a handful of years ago, driving to Cincinnati felt like a Huge Thing to me. I’d been to and from Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo regularly for some time at that point - easy worknight concert runs that I could do in my sleep - but the handful of trips I’d taken to Cincy, they felt… far. As big as Buffalo did to my mother in the 90s.
Last week, I blew past the interchanges for Cincinnati, over the bridge into Kentucky, and on down 75 to Tennessee. Later this year, I’ll drive down to Gainesville, and Tennessee will feel like Cincinnati and Buffalo do to me, now. This shit I’ve been handling the last few months, it’s (hopefully) going to feel like nothing, when I make that trip. The family mess that I battled my way through in 2007… it’s not the crushing thing it was, not anymore. It’s a part of me - just like the landmarks along the way when I do familiar drives - but then? Then, I keep going.
There is something about the lilt in your writing voice when you start to reminisce that feels so much like lil you is telling the story. Not only that, it put me right back to lil me, being on the family road trips, leading me to believe that we surely passed each other from the backseats of our parents’ cars on the way to Buffalo. She’s waving to her with a cool rainbow cast👋 and now I get to wave to you, through the phone, in celebration of how solid the past has found its place with you, not ever slowing you down.
p.s. - thanks for always taking me with you💜