Keeping my eyes on the road

A couple of weeks ago I drove from New York to Boston with a total stranger.  

That’s not the way I’d envisioned my trip to Boston playing out. When I arrived at the Chattanooga airport before sunrise, New York wasn’t on the itinerary. I was supposed to arrive in Boston before noon after a layover in DC.

Instead my first flight was delayed and I missed my connection. When my plane touched down in DC, I got an alert saying I’d now be flying to Boston via New York. When my plane touched down in New York, I got an alert saying I’d now be flying to Boston via Philadelphia, and then a second alert saying the flight to Philly had been cancelled.

I nodded. The rep was talking in my ear.

The woman had pulled up Google Maps on her phone. “It’s a four-hour drive. I might rent a car?”

“I’ll split the cost with you,” I said.

I texted my family to let them know the plan. One daughter said it sounded like a buddy movie. Another daughter asked me to enable location sharing.

The final leg of my trip turned out to be less eventful than either daughter imagined, and certainly less eventful than the trip taken by my suitcase, which flew to Boston, fell off the radar, and was delivered to me the next evening by a guy in a track suit driving his own car.

On our drive to Boston, the woman and I talked about things universal yet personal: grown kids, elderly parents, growing older ourselves. She said it was weird to be dating again since her long marriage ended. I said it was weird to be running for office, to put myself out there in such a public way. We agreed that women are too hard on themselves and that politics are scary now, and we left it at that. 

I couldn’t begin to guess her political leanings. The only box I could put her in was the one we shared as two people trying to get to the same place at the end of the day. 

Sometimes you go farther that way.

Allison
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