But one Thursday evening, after a conversation that felt more like a collision, I got in my car. No GPS. No plan. Just a half-tank of gas and a strange pull toward the highway.
Not as an instruction. As a memory.
I pull over at the same gas station. I buy the same cheap coffee. I drive those same seven extra miles — even when I’m already home. driveyou7home
Because “home” isn’t a place you arrive at once. It’s a place you return to over and over again. Until the road between who you are and who you want to be finally feels like yours. When was the last time you took the long way back to yourself? But one Thursday evening, after a conversation that
I hadn’t thought about that phrase in years. But there it was, floating up through the dark like a lifeline. Just a half-tank of gas and a strange
So I drove seven miles past my usual exit. Then seven more. I rolled down the windows, even though it was cold. I played the album I loved before I started caring what other people thought.
When I was seventeen, my grandfather would say that before every road trip: “Drive you seven home” — his old-country way of saying take the long way back, the way that lets you breathe before you arrive.