appetency: a longing or desire
piepowder: a traveler or itinerant trader
For example: “I am a piepowder of appetency.”
I’m too old to run away from home. But here I am in my silver Toyota Camry, on I-196, before merging onto I-57, driving from Grand Haven, Michigan, to Galveston, Texas. Soon I’m somewhere in the middle of nowhere downstate Illinois, surrounded by a gray October sky and miles of fields of something or nothingness. Maybe last summer’s crop of corn or soybeans once flourished in the horizon-defying fields, but the season for green growth is way past, just as I am way past. But past what?
My (soon to be ex-) husband and I moved to Michigan from Georgia one week ago. Traumatized by the move, I tossed a few clothes in a duffel and hit the road. The salt water of the Gulf of Mexico calls to the salty water that comprises much of the human body. Much of mine. My house in Grand Haven is located only a few blocks from Lake Michigan, but I don’t understand the scentless lake. No salty air; seaweed doesn’t wash ashore. All you’d find on the other side is un-exotic Wisconsin. The waves on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico, however, lap against Cuba or Colombia. In any event, the urge to stand on the beach in Galveston is one of those separated-at-birth urges, an urge to return Home, even though I only lived in Galveston about seven years.
The disorientation of the move to Michigan is exacerbated because I suspect that, even though I moved to be with my husband, he is about to leave me. So I’m also driving to Galveston to spend hours in a car where no one can find me . . . even though, ironically, no one is looking for me. I need to be alone in preparation for really being alone, soon enough.
Elton John’s Greatest Hits CD blares, his voice filling the empty spaces in the car. I especially love the song “I’m Still Standing.” Also ironic because I’m not. Not only am I physically sitting, but I feel flattened by this move to the flat Midwest. When my husband first announced he’d gotten a job offer to teach at a college in West Michigan, I opened my outdated Hammond’s Contemporary World Atlas to locate the state somewhere north of Georgia. Not that I particularly felt at home in Georgia, but I knew I wouldn’t feel at home in Michigan, either. Which is the root of the problem, I suppose. The tantalizing idea of Home is illusory. For me, there is no one single place to stand, to stake a claim, and demand this spot as mine. Except, against all odds, I’m hoping to find such a spot on the beach in Galveston.
At least this is what I tell myself mile after mile, hour after hour, passing those fields of nothingness. My plan doesn’t extend past the one moment of standing on the beach.
In short, I’m now headed south to find out what comes next.
I slouch in the car seat, my left arm pressed against the closed window ledge. I’m still standing. I’m still standing. After listening to the song dozens of times, I memorize the lyrics and sing along as loudly as possible.
The first time I ran away from home, I lived in St. Thomas. I wrapped up two quarters, a mango, and a hair ribbon in a hankie. Sucking on a short joint of sugarcane, I walked down Blackbeard’s Hill to the harbor, abruptly stopping at the boat dock. Which is where I realized the inherent flaw in trying to run away from home when you live on an island. Boundaries. I was hemmed in by lacy foam. I had no intention of swimming across the Caribbean to the other side because I’d surely drown. I simply wanted to run away. Back then I was trapped. Nowhere to go.
Now I’m running to an island. Luckily, Galveston is accessible by a concrete causeway, which I yearn to race across, landing in the soft humid pillow of tropical air. Years after leaving Galveston, I miss it. Or miss something.
Still on I-57, I pass exits for Manteno and Kankakee. I am dazzled by options, so many places one could run away to. Then, after veering onto I-55 in Tennessee, I see a sign for Memphis. Why not? Graceland. I’ve never seen it. I’ve never wanted to see it. I don’t particularly like Elvis Presley. But here it is, presented to me. So, yes, why not?
I pull into the parking lot of Graceland. Hoards of tourists stream past the airplane named Lisa Marie heading toward the white-columned mansion. I funnel along as if sliding down a chute into a make-believe land. This is where Elvis Presley, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, lived. I want to be gripped by the hype. But, upon entering, my breath slows rather than quickens. I slog past fifties-style gold drapes and white sofas. I enter the Jungle Room resembling a post-annihilated rain forest. Or a Polynesian smashup of dusty wood carvings and a green shag carpet. You could say it’s kitsch. But it’s not kitschy enough to be kitsch. Mainly, it’s sad. Elvis’s white-caped suit seems a bit the worse for wear. I want to apologize to it for viewing it well past its prime.
Which is how I feel. Past my prime.
I end up outside by Elvis’s grave. This plot of land is called the Meditation Garden. It’s anything but. Elvis Aaron Presley’s grave is outlined by neon-colored flowers and American flags. Other graves surround his, his mother and father, perhaps. But how can I meditate amid crowds of sobbing women? I feel like weeping, too, but not because of Elvis’s untimely drug-induced demise. Rather, because I fear my own: untimely or otherwise. Death is death any way you encounter it.
Still, why did Elvis hasten his? Maybe Graceland, while appearing to be his sanctuary, wasn’t. Maybe he should have run away from home. He had so much. But maybe the wealth and fame of “much” was, in fact, too “little.” Or the wrong kind of “much,” as reflected in this tacky, trademarked shrine to his life.
That evening, I’m caught in a thunderstorm that washes away vision. I can’t even see taillights ahead of me. I slow to about thirty miles per hour looking for an exit to a motel. The windshield wipers only blur the glass. The sky bleeds pure water, the car hydroplaning. I’m not scared. It simply feels like part of the adventure of running away from home. If you’re going to do something significant, then floods and plagues are part of the package.
I finally find an exit that advertises a motel. I don’t exactly know where I am in that the sign is merely the name of a road, and the motel is not even as unswanky as a Motel 6. It’s a nonbrand, cinderblock, out-of-the-way-last-chance place to (hopefully) survive a night away from home. I now wish I remembered the name of the motel, but I suspect it wouldn’t be kitschy enough to be cool, either. Nor is this a night for metaphors. Tonight, rain is merely rain. A random motel is simply that. At least that’s what I thought back then.
I stumble from the car and am drenched before I reach the unprotected entrance. A teenage girl watches a small black-and-white television behind the registration desk. Silently, I hand her a credit card. No need to inquire about vacancies or price. We both know it doesn’t matter how much it costs since I’m staying here at any rate. Her fingernails are ragged. Her lipstick is mostly licked off. From a kitchenette behind her is the scent of burned popcorn and too-sweet caramel. My body seems to be vibrating, unable to relinquish the motion of the car. My head spins. I grip the counter. The clerk sighs as she hands me the receipt to sign. Her movements are slow, somnambulistic. I almost ask her if she wants to run away with me. However, I suspect that this, right here in this motel, is her home, or as good as it’s going to get for her. In this middle-of-the-night-drenched-night we seem to be the last two people on earth.
My damp palm smudges the receipt. She doesn’t care. She slides a plastic key chain toward me and points toward the left out the door. There is no interior hallway to reach the room. I don’t return to my car for my duffel. I run to the room. Jam the key into the door knob. I enter an anonymous space I’ve encountered a million times before. And, in the end, not so different from Graceland except in size and the color of the shag carpet—burnt orange. I’ve stumbled into a cliché, but clichés have their own appeal if you’re in the right frame of mind. I almost am.
I yank off my wet clothes. I turn on the hot water in the shower. I close the bathroom door so the room fills with steam. I unwrap a miniature bar of no-name soap. I stand under the spray until my skin resembles a first-degree burn. In this early fall weather, I don’t even have the satisfaction of watching summer sweat and dirt swirl down the drain. It’s as if I’m a ghost stained red from the scorching water. Red, but still invisible. No one can see me here since, as I’ve said, no one’s looking. I told my husband I was driving to Galveston, so he wouldn’t call Missing Persons. Still, I feel a mild dissatisfaction that you can run away from home and know that no one’s searching.
I dry off with a towel the size of a washcloth. Then another one. I pull on my underwear and bra. I wrap the faded chenille bedspread around my shoulders and sit on the bed. No dry clothes since I left them in the car. Then I remember my very first suitcase when I was a young child: navy blue, hard-sided. You pushed two brass buttons and the snaps popped open. Inside, a silky mauve lining with little pockets held treasures I found on vacations: shells, or beach glass, or a pine cone, or a plastic ring from a gumball machine. That suitcase always smelled of memories and must.
I missed dinner—too focused on the rain. I dig through my purse for something to eat. All I find is a package of spearmint gum. I chew two pieces and trick my stomach into believing this is food. After the flavor dissipates, I swallow the gum. Wrapped in the spread I lie back on the pillow.
My body reels with the motion of the car as if it’s still speeding forward. It’s as if I don’t know how to stop—have never known how to stop. I try to remember all the streets, roads, interstates, routes, highways that led me here. All the swerves and exits, all the choices to turn here or here or there. I have made right turns, left turns, U-turns, wrong turns. My house in Michigan is perfectly fine, so I don’t know why I can’t accept it as my house. No more need to seek, travel, search. Yet here I am, still restless.
Late the next morning, now on I-40, I glide across state lines into Arkansas. On the spur of the moment, I turn toward Hope, the birthplace of President Bill Clinton. Once you’ve been to Graceland, I figure you must visit Hope as well. I’m so buzzed and disoriented from driving, however, all I find in Hope are shops filled with Bill Clinton souvenirs. I buy a coffee mug. It’s black with a blue silk-screened image of Clinton wearing sunglasses, playing the sax. “The Cure for the Blues,” it reads. I don’t seek out Clinton’s birthplace. I return to the car in a haze of interstate wind and movement, a kind of hollowness on the cusp of displacement. Or perhaps displacement on the cusp of hollowness. Initially, I meant to drive straight from Grand Haven to Galveston, but now I’m meandering into side trips that seemed to promise so much.
Back in the car, heading toward Texarkana, I see what I want to believe is an eagle—though it isn’t—perched on a wood fence. I want it to be an American bald eagle because that would be a good detail for my adventure. Running away from home I discovered Graceland, Hope, and an American bald eagle. I slow the car to watch it. Still not an eagle. I want it to look at me. It doesn’t. It’s quietly leading its bird life, while I’m busy seeking my person life.
Still I drive—the bird now many miles behind me. I stop at gas stations, Burger Kings, bathrooms, one after another, my knees humming with motion, anxious whenever I stop the car. The tires root me to the earth as much as they hurtle me forward to a destination beyond the horizon. My body has always felt unsettled, anxious, ready to move as if my veins themselves are miniature interstates, blood rushing from my neck to my stomach, the crook of an arm to a finger, from knee to a toe, never stopping. I drive on blind faith that these highways will eventually arrive at some point that’s real—one that answers seemingly unanswerable questions—so that I’m no longer merely following lines on a map.
Finally, late afternoon, I stand on the beach in Galveston. I kick off my sneakers and roll up the hems of my black denims. Water washes over my feet. The breeze dampens my hair. Later, I will check into a honky-tonk motel on the honky-tonk seawall. Later, alone, I will eat a shrimp po’ boy on the South Jetty overlooking the Gulf. My first ex-husband no longer lives here. There are no friends to visit. I do not return to renew acquaintances or sightsee. I drive over fifteen hundred miles simply to stand on the beach.
But not just stand on this beach.
For I am also a young girl still standing on the shore of the Caribbean. My arms smell of tropical heat, a bruised mango. I am also a teenage girl still standing on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in New Jersey, smelling of sweet summer sweat and bubblegum—that innocently reckless teenage scent.
I’m also the twenty-six-year-old Galveston “me” who once lived here in a hail of sorrow, a sorrow too intense to carry all of it with me when I moved away. Now I’ve returned to reclaim it. Or, more exactly, reclaim me. Reclaim all my different bodies now hopefully morphing together until I am whole. A completed me. But I’m quite sure that’s more a wish than a reality.
I remain on the beach watching the day slide below the horizon. Still standing. A quest requires a destination. This is mine—at least in the short term. A quest doesn’t necessarily require that you gain insight and knowledge. It doesn’t even require that you return home—despite Odysseus and the whole Odyssey thing. Although, bending to practicality, I did return to that Michigan house where my things and my soon-to-be-ex-husband were stored.
My heart is perhaps too deeply connected to too many places to ever find a physical home that resonates with me. Instead, like a hermit crab, I carry my home with me—an emotional and spiritual home scavenged from the past.
If this is so, then ultimately I am always at home—with myself, with my longings, and with my fear of death.
I want to claim that I saw and understood all of this in that one translucent dusk while contemplating the Gulf of Mexico.
I did not.
It is only later, only at the very moment, this eternal and fleeting now in which I write this—as each word is considered and either kept or discarded like so many seashells—that I build for myself my own place of hope and grace.