Thinking

Tonight is the type of night that feels like July, not May.

I gave baby brother's mom a ride home from work about an hour ago. After I dropped her off, I turned right at the light and headed over to the Meijer gas station for a pack of smokes. Something about the warm weather, my headlights pointing down a two lane road still relatively free of light pollution, and the playlist I had going on the van radio triggered sudden flashbacks of every other solo summer nighttime drive I've made over the years. Working in Pellston, and heading home - to wherever I was living at the time, since it changed up some over the course of six years - or driving back into Petoskey to grab a drink at the bar with Jeremy, or just out driving around when I was still young and somewhat immortal.

I gave the guy my money and my ID through the window, and he returned with my change, my ID, and a pack of Camel menthols. I got back in the van, lit one, and started back toward home. Turning off the highway onto one of the side streets that leads toward my place, I started thinking.

There's a lot of years and mileage between Megan-now and Megan-at-22. Yet somehow, the warm summer air, Hot Action Cop on the radio, and the taste of mentholated smoke being drawn into my lungs sends me flying back through time, past babies and tattoos, cuts and burns and fractured bones, addresses and phone numbers - it all gets sucked out the window into the slipstream of warm air rushing past my windshield. I feel lucky.

Megan at 22 didn't have to worry about feeding her kids, keeping up on the latest baby gear recalls, the price of diapers, or the ins and outs of potty training. She had another sort of quiet desperation that she had to work through, in order to get to where she - I - is/am now. There's fifteen pounds, two feet less hair, a jar of blue hair dye, a pair of glasses, and numerous small scars separating us. I don't really miss her or envy her. I'm good with who I am now.

My house is small compared to some of the others on my street. This town is wealthy, conservative, and predominantly white. Every time I go to the grocery store, I get at least one dirty look from a stuck-up rich man or woman. Usually their evil eye is aimed at the nose ring or the blue hair, although if I'm wearing a tanktop the tattoos get their share of glare as well. While I'd like to have their money, I don't envy them for where they are in life.

Here's the thing. What we have, we've worked for. I've earned every disfigurement to my body. I've paid for my deliberate body mods with sweat and blood and pain. I'm still relatively young, smart enough to be thankful for what I have, and ambitious enough to want to work toward a better life, for myself and for my children.

These people who stare at me and cluck in disapproval, what do they have? Six figure incomes, multiple homes and cars, and a bitter spirit to accompany. They get lipo'ed and botoxed, they have affairs with the secretary or the gardener, they feel their own private miseries just like everyone else. The difference is, most of them are so far out of touch with themselves and the simple things that can bring joy that they throw their money at what they perceive as the hindrances preventing their happiness.

Houses, cars, vacations, cruises, therapists and hobby classes and gardens fit for landscaping magazines, and yet they pay people to wash their windows and never sink their fingers into warm rich soil. They try to repurchase their youth and beauty with expensive cosmetics and surgical procedures and look down on me for being monetarily beneath them.

Here's the secret. I might be below them on the social-class scale. But all it takes to make me feel young and pretty is a warm dark night, some good music on the car radio, and the knowledge that everything tends to work out in the end.