Sunday, September 2, 2012

Homecoming


Homecoming 

By Matthew Ciarvella 

I drive with one hand on the wheel and one eye on the road, trying to navigate with the other eye on the GPS. You would think you wouldn’t forget how to find your way home, but navigating by memory only works when you get to a place that you actually remember and the world you remember as a child is so much smaller. It just stops in your mind after a certain point and even though you know logically that there is more to the world beyond that point in memory, you don’t remember what it looks like. You can’t, really. You’re asking for an adult’s responsibility of a child’s memory.

So that’s what the GPS is for. Its faux-female voice is my only companion in an otherwise silent car. “In one point two miles, turn left!” the GPS exclaims with a sort of automated enthusiasm, as if it care whether or not I ever reach my destination.

I miss the turn. It comes up on me suddenly as I’m glancing at the tiny GPS screen and it’s too late for me to get over in time.