On days when I get sick of applications and working dead-end jobs I run to the lake. On my way along the hills that chart my course downtown, I stop and look up at the capitol dome. The golden goddess of liberty stares down at me from her pedestal while I wave my splotched, sweaty arms at her.
She greets me back, and, with hesitation, asks, “If you’re waving like you want to stay, why do you have to leave?”
I can’t bring myself to tell her that if I don’t, I might stay here forever.
And someday soon I know she’ll release me from her embrace and I’ll leave the places I’ve always known.
When I depart, I know I’ll miss the roads.
***
I’ll drive out of the city along familiar highways to say goodbye to my parents.
I’ll stare up at the clear sky, a Rothko in its blueness, and notice the blooming spring wildflowers below bidding me farewell. The blues and pinks and yellows and indigos will whisper to each other,
“What if she never comes back?”
My car will move in and out of the left lane like my dad taught me when I turned 15. I’ll steer clear of 18-wheelers, trailers, campers, and cement mixers.
I’ll think of him saying to me, “It’s just a matter of time driving on these roads before a mixer’s debris hits your windshield and leaves a spider crack.”
Maybe I’ll spot roadkill: a possum, a raccoon, an armadillo, a deer, a turtle, or, god forbid, a dog. Each time I see the carnage I leave a part of myself with it—smaller than a river pebble. I’ll look up from the meat to the birds circling overhead, diving and swooping through encroaching train-smoke storm clouds. Maybe there’s a crow, a heron, a sandhill crane, a flock of geese in a perfect V shape, a red-tailed hawk, a buzzard, or a vulture swarming to eat what lies below.
A baby on board bumper sticker will remind me of family road trips, driving hours and hours and hours south and east and north and west. I’ll think of open roads, a family of six squashed into a car headed toward West Texas mountains. A little girl, at eleven, laden with a suitcase of toys and childish scribblings because I couldn’t handle change, growing up, leaving, and becoming a new person. I still can’t.
I’ll pass ranches and farms, a paint splattering of cows: heifers, steers, bulls, calves, the color of every shade of dirt. I’ll watch the longhorns pressed against the barbed wire, horns reaching up to grab the blue. Past that one ranch that sprawls forever with the out-of-place zebra and oryx herds reminding me of the faraway places fool’s gold took my family. Faraway from Texas, everywhere.
I’ll wonder what spot along this highway is the stretch of flattened grass, long since regrown, where I got a flat tire and spun out of control. My sister and I cried afterward, but maybe it was more about where we were headed. My parents followed behind with my boxes and my mom drove us to Austin while my dad fixed my car.
Maybe I’ll make the drive at night. I’ll be unable to see the land but know, in the darkness, grass and hillsides stretch on in an endless plain like oceans. I’ll see the black outline of live oaks, unlit lighthouses holding entire worlds beneath their branches as they shake in the night winds. Maybe in the purple dark, if I look real hard, I’ll find a glimpse of my future; a buoy to tell me that it will all be alright, it will work out, this decision I’m making.
Eventually, I’ll pull off the highway, past my high school, the alma mater of my dad, aunts, uncles, brothers, sister, and maybe my children if I never leave. I’ll think of how when my mom and grandma came to live in Texas from the North and East they cried. On autopilot, I’ll pull into our cul-de-sac.
I’ll open my front door and my dogs will come with their greeting wet noses and round eyes. They’ll smell the open road, the long drive, the wildflower waves.
Sally will look up at me and remind me with her Labrador wisdom, “Wildflowers are just weeds in the end.”
Madeline Muschalik currently resides in New York City & works in children's publishing. She studied Public Relations, Creative Writing, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating in 2022.