Endless Roads

That familiar gusty wind smacked my face as my dad and I walked out of Omaha, Nebraska's Eppley Airport. It was this same wind that greeted me when I walked to school, played football on flat fields with friends from school, atop a hill with three tennis courts where I hit more than a thousand strokes, and the cold accompanying it that fights my lungs. Ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, "A good traveler is one who has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving." My dad should've been given a sword, sheep skin, and a horse for his rogue behavior. He rushed to the rental car area, while I lagged behind puffing on a much needed cigarette.

The scenery separates this great land from others I've lived or travelled in. Small blankets of snow covered the prairie fields. Alfalfa grass is near the highway. Rows of wheat and corn fields have been cut with the finest precision for the harvest season has ended. The roadway is flat with an occasional hill that complements the approaching hills in the prairies before reaching the Sandhills region. As some might see this as monotany, I view it as one of nature's purest last resorts. It's unfettered and controlled by the very few fortunate enough to see its resources provide for countless families.

My nose was filled with congestion. It hit me earlier in the day when we had just stepped onto the train at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport. Naturally, my dad wanted to wait til we were closest to our destination to stop for taking a piss and buying cold medicine. It was like I was five years old again. "Come on, let's go," he barked. "Stay with me." O.k., Genghis Khan.

We finally stopped at a K-Mart in Grand Island, where several family members once lived there and a few who still do. I bought two Dasani bottle waters and unbeknownst to me, the fucking water was turned to ice. I shook one of the bottles to drain what little water I could get out of it.

My nose still drained like a river upon arriving at my dad's oldest brother's home in a very desolate, remote town of under 200 people. Some of my second cousins were inside running around with blaring voices. One of these distant relatives stood out. I had a chilling conversation with his mother who is the oldest cousin on my dad's side.

Adam has the same enthusiasm for sports and tireless energy I had at his age of 15. His physical features are similar -- braces, tall and scrawny, and short blonde hair. He loves playing basketball, as I did at his age but has a tougher time at it. His mother told me Adam's life is a hellish one, stricken with intense anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

As one of many teachers in our family, I sulked when she told me she hopes Adam just passes all of his classes. Recently, she had to place him on Lexapro. The only signs I saw from my recent family reunion in June '08 and that night was Adam's hurried speech. He talks about Nebraska's football team, basketball, and other topics like someone will interrupt him if he doesn't quickly deliver his musings. After hearing about Adam's problems, I wanted to tell him how I coped; I just didn't care about what anyone thought. Find something creative and stick with it. Be different and question everything. Work on something you truly want to do. I couldn't muster the strength to tell him this.

I sat down with Adam and talked with him. Instead of imposing how I coped with loneliness and bouts of alienation at his age, I mainly listened to what he said. He told me he struggles with his Physical Science class. I responded by giving him advice that he has to continually practice to conquer this subject. "Everything in life has problems where you can find solutions. This is how science is. You'll find the solutions, but you have to keep practicing at it. That's how I got through it." He shrugged his shoulders and sighed, "Yeah." We finished with talking about basketball and some basic fundamentals I told him to use to succeed -- play tough defense by raising your arms straight up to block your opponent's view of a good shot and go for rebounds when the opponent shoots the ball.

The next day, my dad and I visited my grandmother at her care provided home in an apartment-type setting. From our last visit two years ago, I yearned for one thing -- soft serve vanilla ice cream in a cone. I had about three. We approached her room with a "Hillary for President" sticker on her door.

My dad wasted no time showing recent family photos. At one point, she began sobbing. Her younger sister who recently passed away was shown to her. They were separated for years fighting for farm land that my grandfather owned. The dispute arose because their relative, Angelo, an Italian immigrant, settled in Nebraska and first owned the land. Before my great aunt passed away, they made amends. I still believe to this day this is why she might've passed away with peace.

Once again, my grandmother told me how our family first settled in Nebraska with more details I heard for the first time. Angelo was the youngest in his family, so he couldn't inherit the family land in Genoa, Italy. He and his cousin decided to leave. On the night before leaving, they flipped a coin to determine which America they would settle in, North or South. It landed for North, so they settled in New York City. Angelo married but his wife refused to travel West where "she didn't want to be scalped by those damn Indians." Perhaps in an act of determination, Angelo did what he thought he needed to do to survive and eventually prosper. He left her and moved to Nebraska. Since he didn't recognize divorce, like Hemmingway's ex, she didn't get a red cent of his inheritance after his death. This just sounded completely cold-hearted, but Angelo was described as a very loving and caring man.

Concluding this brief vacation, I met up with my better or worse half, Chelsa. She recently moved to Springfield, Missouri with her goober fiancee. He only returns a day or two a month, because he works at an ethanol plant 10 hours away in Indiana. Chelsa told me she's now a grandmother. What? She said this guy's 15-year-old daughter just had a kid. Great. This guy sounds like a winner.

She drove me back to her mother's home where we would watch The Strangers and Wanted. As a fellow horror fan, she enjoyed The Strangers. My kindred rebellious cousin who moved away from Iowa as an exotic dancer and taxi driver told me she is looking for work. I provided her simple advice that she needs to personally visit employers in her area, instead of applying with no face online and hoping someone will return her follow-ups. She shocked me when she received a call from who she said was her girlfriend.

"Yeah, I'm bisexual," she said.

I asked to see a photo from one. Wow. She provided two. One showed this woman's long, flowing brown hair and the other was a photo of well, everything. I began using perverse language to convey what I would do to her lesbian girlfriend. We both chuckled.

Who knows what 2009 will offer? I will think about Adam, my grandmother, and hoping Chelsa does what she does best, performing arts. Each one has lived with struggles and were able to overcome them. I hope Adam finds that one goal he can strive to achieve, grandma will socialize with her neighbors instead of holing up in her room all day, and Chelsa leaves this dope who is two years older than me and doesn't have his shit together. These endless roads are what we travel on. I don't set my sights on one particular destination.