Family Vacation

Four weeks in, quarreling and far from home, we came to the loneliest place. A western railroad town. Remember? I left you at the campsite with greasy pans and told our children not to follow me. The dying light had made me desperate. I broke into a hobbled run, across tracks, past warehouses with sun-blanked windows to where a playground shone in a wooded clearing. Then I was swinging, out over treetops. I saw myself never going back, yet whatever breathed in the mute woods was not another life. The sun sank. I let the swing die, my toes scuffed earth, and I was rocked into remembrance of the girl who had dreamed the life I had. Through night, dark at the root, I returned to it.