On Roads and Journeys and the Necessity of Stars

On the evening of July 6th I attempted to capture a moment. Had I been 17 and not 38, lithe and youthful rather than cumbersome and slightly aging, it would have been a poignantly carefree photo: three friends laying in the bed of a pickup truck, staring at the stars, pondering life and feeling youthfully insignificant.

Instead, the photo, haphazardly perfect in its own way, showed three women spilling gracelessly–artlessly and awkwardly– out of the open tailgate of a Chevy Silverado. There were no tight tummies or tumbles of blonde hair. The art direction– though warned against by my husband– could only be described as “the least flattering photo of three women nearing40: a portrait of stargazing; a cautionary tale about photo documentation.”

Graceless, but endlessly memorable.

The photo, one in a long line of those taken by my husband during our five day pilgrimage to Far West Texas, was significant, not for its lack of flattery– abundant though that was– but for its clumsy symbolism. I unpacked the photo again and again, chuckling and cringing, but also getting unnecessarily serious, as writers are want to do, about what goddamned near everything means. If anything.

My husband turned 40 this summer, and if he seems wholly unaffected by the event, I am wholly affected. It’s not…