I pulled the pillow Mac had left at the house out of the backseat and stuffed it between my head and the car door. There's nothing like a nap in the car. I take naps when the scenery around me is boring or ugly, and when I shut my eyes, I do so with the hope that the next time I open them I'll be somewhere prettier, more exciting. And I don't know about you, but when I think about those adjectives, I definitely don't think Willie's Woodhouse, a barbeque joint adjacent to a Shell gas station somewhere between Houston and Fort Worth. And it was here, in the most mundane of barbeque joints that I found the kind of beauty I was looking for.
For this to make any sense, or maybe to just convince you all I am a crazy, or maybe just to brag about this awesome sandwich I had, let me describe this lunch. Imagine yourself sitting on an enormous picnic bench, across from your beautiful and amazing mother, who seems almost comically far away on the other side of the table. There's a sweet tea on your red tray next to a steaming chopped beef sandwich in a little box. You open the box and proceed to dump nearly all the barbeque sauce you have in your little plastic cup onto your sandwich, and after deciding the best place to take that first bite, you begin to eat. Sauce, sweet and sticky and just a little spicy, drips down your hand and nestles itself into the cracks of your fingers and hands. The meat's okay, but the sauce is so damn good you would probably eat dog food if it had this shit on it. Little kids sit by their moms and their dads and their uncles and neighbors all around you, and ask innocent questions, like "what does wonder mean?" or "why is your tea not as sweet as mine?" They're not annoying, which really is something to marvel at, that many kids in one room and not one of them is screaming or driving everyone crazy. It's not a special place, you remind yourself. It's connected to a Shell gas station. But it's light and it's clean and it's friendly and you know exactly what to do there, and what everyone expects of you and Goddamn, isn't that a comfort? And it's not you sitting on that bench in the middle of God Knows Where, Texas, it's me, and the thoughts that are racing through my head are mine, and they are for the first time in several days not terrified ones. Instead they are memories, memories of things that make me so happy I start to laugh. Mom looks up and smiles. I can't stop giggling at everything. A little girl sneezes and I almost lose it. My sweet tea-- it's hilarious. The butchered remains of my sandwich-- hysterical. The moist towelettes-- oh God don't even get me started on the moist towelettes.
I don't know what came over me, but something in that barbeque joint let me know that everything was going to be alright.
"Are you laughing at anything in particular?" Mom asks, knife and fork hovering above her brisket.
"No... I'm just happy."
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Now that you all think I am looney-tunes and totally unfit to leave the country by myself, I picked up my visa today! SO IT'S OFFICIAL!!! I think I look like an international spy in my visa picture. Mainly because it looks like a mug shot, only it has sweet stamps all over it/my face. It's pretty rad.
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