Family Travel / 19

I remember my last visit, as a child, with Aunt Gail. I must have been nine. I’d spent the week in Maine where my aunt was a third grade teacher.

“What can I do?” I asked and she never ran out of answers. Storybooks and coloring books, cable TV and tidal pools, hermit crabs and what does that cloud look like to you?

Now it was the last afternoon and I was making pictures with graph paper and colored pencils.

The growl of my father’s diesel Rabbit. I swear I could hear that car coming from ten miles away.

I tried to explain I couldn’t possibly go with him. Not that day. Too much to do.

He’s standing there in some other language. The car’s running.

My aunt lets me go.