ALOFT

Car love. Color. Outside. Inside. Tires. Leather seats. Lift gate. Heated seats. Expansive windshield. Horses. Sunroof.  

Nine years later, I still love driving it as much as the first day. Reliability. Pedal to the metal. Could there be any new experience left to discover behind the wheel?

Driving down the road to visit my mother. Tom Petty’s Freefallin’ on the radio, a mesmerizing song which always changes my volume. She’s a good girl.

Freefall. You cannot say the word without the up and down it represents. Seconds of suspension hanging in time, unaffected by earth’s movement. Falling into what was.

First memorized poem – eight years old. Robert Louis Stevenson.  “Up in the air I go flying again, up in the air and down.” The magic.

I spend the night. We make the requisite WalMart excursion. Then to Oceans for Fried Catfish and shrimp and cry about ‘em fries. A good visit. Sally on Best Behavior Cat.

Heading home the next day. Eighty degrees. Running naked weather. Perfect. Big, blue ribbon sky. Bedraggled trees I will not kid you about the leaves.

I only open the sunroof on city streets – a decent breeze. But this day, I open the sunroof for the highway. And just for something new, the front windows too, all the way down. The sun on my head and arms. Even my short hair whipping around my face.

What a rush! Flying eighty down the interstate. Little traffic. Wind all around, rushing through the windows and up through the sunroof. The sun. The swirl. Wind lifts. It’s almost like flying, driving in the full sun and blasting wind. I yell like I’m riding the Himalaya at the Fair.

Driving down the highway. Radio cranked. Hoping for the notes and lyrics sung for thousands of miles. Notes which lift and exhilarate. Freebird and Frankenstein. Stairway to Heaven.  American Pie. Stayin’ Alive. Hotel California. Sweet Home Alabama. Jet Airliner. September. Bennie and the Jets. Bohemian Rhapsody. Let It Be.

Blue. Breeze. Heat on my skin. Fleetwood Mac. John Denver. We Are Family.

Free. Being there. Staying there. Summer 80. “How can they be that close? Just let me say for the record we’re giving love in a family dose.”*  Three dancing. Daddy twirls the Dancing Queen. Shuffle. I can see his smile. Anything to make his girls happy. Parquet dance floor. Disco Ball. Backgammon. Sunday. Employees. We are family.  

The freefall of memory. Hanging in the air, aloft. A minute of everyday halted, triggered by the notes of a song or a fragrance. Suspension. Earnest focus. Memory of touch. Obsession. The bright flash will not bring back the place or person. The world has kept on moving. Falling, stretching out the dance until landing back on earth into time already passed.

*Sister Sledge We Are Family  1979