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Sometimes, when I was young, maybe three, or four, or maybe five or six, my family (or what there was of us at the time) would be driving home from my Yiayia?s late on a Sunday night, probably even at such an hour as nine PM, if you can imagine it. We may as well have just pulled an all-nighter, if we were to go that far. I remember it mostly in the summertime, when it was my favorite kind of day ? rainy with a semi-clear sky and warm, so you could play in the rain. I liked (and still like) those types of days so much that usually when it rains during the summer, I?m the first one to go out barefoot and stand in it for a while. We would be riding in the van way in the backmost seat, because that was the favorite, and the rain made the flowers outside grow, yes, but, even better, it made the pavement glisten under the streetlamps. You could see the rain churning the Merrimack River up and the lights of the city and the riverside homes sending ripples of reflected light onto it, and I could lay my left cheek onto the cool of the window, jarring slightly over the roads as we drove, and see the rain splashing almost onto my face, if it were not for the glass there. My parents would be sitting there far away at the front of the van, holding hands as my Dad drove, and I never felt tired.
We?d drive past our street, and we?d all ask where we were going. ?Are we going to get a treat?? My Father would always say that we were going to Broccoli Land. That meant that we were going for a longer ride so that we, the kids, would fall asleep. I picked up on that one pretty quickly. I never could fall asleep in the car, but I?d fake it, my head pressed against the window, leaning on the armrest, with my legs tucked under me up on the seat. I?d close my eyes and it was my deepest hope that I?d be able to fake it well enough to hear my parents start talking quietly to themselves, laughing together about stories of what happened during the day and which one of us kids did something stupid, and I wanted to be almost asleep so that I could feel, with my eyes closed, the turns the car needed to take as we drove home, and that finally, anticipating it, I could feel my body lurch forward into the driveway of my home. I loved hearing my parents talk together like best friends. Like they were still fifteen. I always wanted to be good enough at feigning sleep that I could feel my Dad?s or Mum?s hand on my head, saying, ?Wake up, Cass. We?re home.? And we always were.
This weekend my parents are away for their anniversary. It is their twentieth.