Tourists looking down into the grand canyon in 1947. We’ve always been fascinated by the places time carved out before us.
It was still cool outside. The kind of spring day that gives you a summer sun wrapped with winter’s last chilled breath. On our way home from California, the radio was low and the girls slept in the backseat. Riley held my hand and I stared ahead. The window framed the Utah desert – a painting that’s faded in the sun. I’ve made that drive a hundred times since I was a little girl. I know the high and low places, the breaks in the road, the emptied gas stations and broken down cafes. I could trace it out for you in the desert sand. Familiarity doesn’t always mean certainty, of course.
There’s a canyon. A few miles long and a few hundred feet tall. It curves and shadows and slows and rolls. I’m always afraid when we drive through there. It is too fast, or too slow. Too twisted or too sloped. Riley always teases while I suck the breath through my teeth and clench my eyes as the car speeds past rock that has stood since before our hopes were born. It isn’t just the speed or the car. I feel small there. Mortal. One of millions that will pass by those stones without asking what they’ve seen. I used to think they felt my silence, but now I’ve begun to think I am the one being ignored. That canyon holds time I’ll never touch and as we curve through it to return to our home and chores and worries, I sometimes wonder what we’ve left behind.
The drive that day wasn’t so different. Going into the canyon felt the same. An intake of air and then fast talking to act like I wasn’t afraid. Riley smiled knowingly and so I put my words away and looked out the window.
A car and then yellow lines and then a tree and a stream and then briefly, so briefly my heart recorded it before my eyes – a father and daughter on the side of the road, looking over the red clay expanse. She held a camera and he held her shoulders. A guide to the art of vision and focus. And for just an instant, amid those sentinels that hold time, I could feel the weight of my father’s hands on my shoulders. His words of encouragement as I chose the focus and filter for my world. The beauty of the moments I had once, the ones that exist somewhere in the places I’ve lived through till they’re worn with the breathing and leaving. I was a girl that still had a dad and a heart that beat without the patchwork of hope and faith and sanctified sorrow. Another moment and then the scene was gone, hidden by our progress and the jutting earth.
The road flattened and the horizon grew. The canyon fell behind us. I cried as it I felt it collapse on the time it held and the person I used to be.
Riley looked over at me, his eyes still knowing and I remembered his hand on mine. I squeezed it once and then wiped away the wetness from my face.
“Ready to get home?”
“Ready.”
And we drove on.
