Just a Hole (or, “Leaving Home in a Sensible Car vs. An Escalator”)
I left home in the passenger seat of a sensible car. My older cousin drove. The car was so sensible it made it from Portland to Boise on a single tank of gas, up and over the Blue Mountains and down the other side. We only stopped that one time, filled up, obliterated all 800 miles in 10 hours. The future comes at you so fast, but we didn’t know that yet, so we were running as fast as we could to catch it. Otherwise, we thought, it might get away.
The metaphysics of holes. (Puerto Carrillo, Costa Rica;; May 2021)
I never thought to look back as I pulled away from our piney street tucked against the base of the butte. I bet my mom was waving goodbye, standing there alone, blinking wet eye blinks, but I don’t know for sure. I didn’t turn, I didn’t see. The world ahead of me was alive in color, the world behind was just a hole.
My daughter left home on an escalator with a backpack slung over her shoulder, a water bottle dangling from one hand. I watched through a window, on the sidewalk outside the little airport, dawn was still the navy blue color of distance. The escalator carried Savannah up, up, up. She didn’t look back, didn’t see me waving, blinking wet eye blinks. The world up beyond the escalator was alive in color, and it occurred to me then that maybe now I was just a hole.
Two weeks later I’m running up the side of the green, jungled volcano that looms over San Salvador. Through the overgrown municipal park, out the gate and into the scattered patches of coffee trees, past the guy who extorts you for a dollar every time you pass. Then the tangled green canopies soar higher overhead, the footing feels wilder, the trail tilts upward even more. The sun from four miles ago has burned up, now I’m running up through angry rain clouds.
The sound of a thunderstorm ripping open overhead is somehow bigger than the sky and water falls so hard you can’t help but think of God. The air is rain. I move up, up, up the mountain, blinking wet eye blinks.
Then the clouds seem to dry heave, exhausted. They peel apart into a sun-shaped hole. I watch the sun shine through it, and, suddenly, I understand what it means to be just a hole.
