The Detour Issue

“I need to get my life back on track,” I think to myself with some urgency all too often. As if there’s an invisible path that everyone ambitious and accessorized is following and I’m veering off on the shoulder or taking too many rest stops or side trips. I realized recently that I probably don’t take enough detours, that I say I want spontaneity in my life, but instead I’m just going with the fl ow a lot of the time. This month, I’m giving a speech in Lexington, Kentucky, so I’ve decided I’ll take a detour that’s short in miles but long overdue. First, I’ll look up my high-school boyfriend, the one and only original love of my life I never forgot, so that we can see what has changed and what has remained the same. Then I’ll cry my eyes out, turn on some heartwrenching country music, and look for the winding two-lane road to the old church where I was christened and the farm where I spent so much of my childhood. I doubt that the map in my mind and the Google map I’ll follow will bear much resemblance to each other. My internal landmarks include the fence I sat on to watch for the mailman, the creek where two of my cousins drowned one spring day, the barn where an owl spoke to me from the rafters. The Google map will probably take me by Burger Kings and strip malls, and the tobacco fields my grandfather farmed are probably housing developments now. I’m getting my life off track so that I can look for the ghosts of summers past and the ghost of the girl I left behind. If you’re overachieving, don’t wait for me—I’ll catch up later.