“Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.”
~Marcel Proust
Pasadena, California ~ Summer 2020
Kierkegaard once wrote, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” I find myself thinking about that often. Every day, if you want to know the truth.
It had taken a full year of letters, long-distance phone calls and passionate holiday visits before Donovan finally moved to Arizona to be with me. Two years after that, we got married in a small, private ceremony in Flagstaff—the week after I turned twenty-one.
My parents and Donovan’s mom flew down for the wedding, and Gideon surprised us by showing up for a few hours, too. He introduced himself to our NAU friends at the reception as “Andy, our California cousin.” He had deep golden sun streaks in his hair and a new mustache to complement his beard. He came alone, still riding his motorcycle.
In the decades since, he’s reappeared on occasion. Most of the time, we really didn’t know what he did professionally or where he lived, but we’d get a surprise postcard from him a couple of times per year, a rare phone call and sometimes even an impromptu visit—just never in Minnesota.
Gideon hadn’t wanted to “grow up” in the traditional sense. As far as I know, he never got married himself, he always drifted and he remained a great lover of personal freedom. A choice that was his to make.
Donovan said he’d defended our country to protect freedoms like these. That Gideon’s choice of duty and service was different from his own, but “it wasn’t the job of one brother to force another into following the same path…just to help him on his journey and carry the load sometimes if needed.”
Billy Neville had a slightly different perspective. One day, after he’d become deputy chief, he told us that my brother had turned down repeated offers to join not only the FBI but the Albuquerque police force as well.
Though he was disappointed, he felt it was all right that Gideon elected not to do it.
Billy said, “Some people need to settle down to find themselves. That’s how they know who they are. How they know they’re really home. But others can only know themselves through action. By being in motion. As a traveler on an ultimate journey.”
I came to understand that more clearly as the years went on. In thinking about my own travel adventures, and those of my children, I realized that, yes, I’d come to know myself better, too, when on the road. And though driving trips always remind me of the summer I turned eighteen and all of the accompanying memories—both the good and the bad—I still enjoy going on those excursions.
At least as long as Donovan is with me.
I graduated from NAU with a degree in library science the year after Donovan and I got married. We had our first son that fall and named him after Donovan’s brother and his beloved grandfather: Jeremy Joseph McCafferty. We called him “J.J.” and, later, just “Jay,” a school nickname that stuck. Our “baby” boy is now thirty-eight, still married to Susan, with three kids of his own. Two girls and a boy.
My husband and I welcomed a second son four years later and named him Charles Andrew, after my father and, in a way, my brother. Yes, that’s my Charlie. No wife or children for him yet, but he’s got a live-in girlfriend (a different one, her name’s Meg) and two very excitable cocker spaniels. They seem happy together, which is all I care about. He always remembers to call me now if he’s going out of town.
Donovan started taking college classes part time the year he moved to Arizona and, eventually, got his degree in mechanical engineering. He learned to design complicated things inside cars, which I mostly don’t understand, but I nod my head encouragingly whenever he talks about it. He got a job offer in Pasadena shortly after he graduated, so we moved to California then. I still work at the public library downtown, while Donovan just retired this spring from the car manufacturing plant.
As far as what happened to everyone else…
Well, Betsy and I lost touch about thirty years ago. However, through the Chameleon Lake gossip vine, I know she was married, divorced and remarried—with five kids and some twelve grandchildren. Lives in northern Florida these days.
Donovan’s mother moved to Santa Fe a few months after our firstborn arrived.
“That way,” she told us, “I can be closer to both Jeremys.”
She’s in a lively retirement community there now and has been more active in the past decade than many women half her age.
My father died about five years ago, but my mom still lives up in Minnesota. She’s frailer, of course, than she used to be, but her mind is still strong. Her memories even stronger.
That long-ago summer, she made me promise that if I were ever able to bring Gideon home, I should. For her.
It was, perhaps, the one thing my brother—despite all his ciphers, codes and cleverness—could never understand. We mothers may not openly challenge our children when they let us go, but we never let them go. It was my mom’s dearest wish to be permanently reunited with her son.
And now I can give that gift to her.
Today, it’s my birthday. Sixty years old. Where did the decades go? And I’m waiting for Donovan to finish checking the tires so he can bring the car around.
It’s not a 1978 Firebird Trans Am, but a new zippy-red Ford convertible. We’ve got the GPS programmed, digital music downloaded and ready to play, our cell phones charged and a cooler in the backseat packed with turkey sandwiches, chilled sodas and a handful of Kit Kats. (Many things change with the times, but not everything.)
This will be Day One of our return trip along the Mother Road—or as much of it as is left—and, for us, driving the historic West to East route in its entirety for the first time.
I found love along this road, back when we’d once headed the other way. Faced death and fear. And chose my future.
Some might question my moral compass or raise their eyebrows at the decisions I made, but I acted on instinct, and I believe it served me well. With the perspective of so many years behind me, I know I made the right choices for me.
As for my traveling companions—those truest to me over time—it was always Donovan. He was my best friend, my surrogate brother while I needed one, my lover and, eventually, my husband and the father of my children.
The two of us are retracing a handful of unforgettable steps in finally doing the Route 66 drive back…and, this time, we’re bringing Gideon with us.
He was sixty-two when he died—in May, just five weeks ago—a hero (or antihero) felled by cancer, not by some villain. Either way, he was gone from our lives too soon.
I’m keeping a record of our journey. We’ll be stopping in Flagstaff to visit old college friends, in Albuquerque to see Billy Neville and to pay our respects at Jeremy’s gravesite, in Santa Fe to spend a day or two with Donovan’s mother and even in the Chicago suburbs to meet up with Amy Lynn and her family for a night.
But, after that, we’ll take my brother’s ashes up to Chameleon Lake to give to my mom, whose enduring love persists regardless of time.
And then Gideon Gray will finally have returned home.