" Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it." -Cesare Pavese
Last 2015-2016 winter break I was granted the privilege and freedom of being able to travel with my sister, Maria, and dear friend, Jelissa. Oh, what times we had! I suppose that starting off this exposition with a (brilliant) Cesare Pavese quote will satisfy. Later, I will tie this hash into his excerpt.
The first trip we went on was the annual Holiday Youth Convention (HYC), in Dearborn, Michigan. This is an event hosted for the youth of the United Pentecostal Church (UPC) in Michigan. It is an enjoyable event where we have church and worship services in The Royal Dearborn Hotel. It offers some pretty enjoyable fellowship with peers you either know or do not know. I met a considerable amount of new, splendid people that I thoroughly enjoy! The youth leaders from my church (South Flint Tabernacle) supervised us girls along with the rest of our own SFT youth group. This trip set the atmosphere and eagerness for us to get out of Michigan and be without full supervision. Desire for the open road set in, we wished for a crumb of freedom.
Us three girls, fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen, ordered a road trip the day before we departed to Indiana (Indy)... A complete ape move, I know. Jelissa had texted me the night before we packed to leave and said something along the lines of, "I want to go on a road trip," it was a pretty generic idea. So, I started talking about this summer and ideas for places to travel to. Yellow Stone National Park or whatever basic notion I threw out in the open.
"I mean now, like the day after tomorrow."
Mind you, it was December 30th. We had just gotten home from HYC that mid-day. New years was just around the corner! Somehow Jelissa came up with the thought of going to visit her aunt in Indiana, as well as her grandma, our Pastor's family. This would give us a taste of freedom but our parents would know where we were staying and life would be swell.
So we begged and we pleaded with our parents to allow us to travel to Indy alone. A four hour one-way car ride. We were to stay with Jelissa's aunt for Friday the first through Sunday the third. This took an ample amount of supplicating, Maria and I had never been on a road trip having a nineteen year old as the oldest, just as Jelissa has never been the oldest one to do the "over seeing" on a road trip. Our parents hesitantly agreed, sending us off to Indiana, which is not that far but it was a great big step for our future in traveling.
The trip, for me was a chance to prove my maturity towards traveling and just being responsible in general. That "maturity" stuff is what makes the story long, so now I will stray from that topic and try to communicate with you how blithe the trip was for all of us.
We spent about two-fifths of the trip in cars driving while discovering the highways, roads, avenues, and lanes of Michigan/Indiana. Starbucks, Qdoba, Chipoltle, and Gordmans kept us alive. Shopping took up a majority of our trip as well. Many times did we stop the car to stretch out our bodies.
Lack of sleep.
Most of all, we had an amazing opportunity to share the morning church service with Jay's aunt. Their church was so beautiful as well as the people that made up the congregation. Every one of the individuals we came into contact with were true gems!
We were in unknown land, unaware of every factor imaginable. These trips held a lot of "firsts" for us all. The apple maps app was by far the most used app in those days. Nothing was ours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.
I would not trade these trips for the world, they were an explosion of fun. All three of us learned so much and grew together on these trips. I cannot wait to go back, and until then I will cherish the times we had.
Lord, I know that people's lives are not their own; it is not for them to direct their steps. (Jeremiah 10:23)
