Odyssey

He sits behind me, back and to the right. The light flashes across his face in bright bursts of fluid, blinding white, illuminating his broad smile and the exhilaration in his eyes as the car shifts effortlessly over alternating hurdles of sunlight and shadow. "Is this the highway, Daddy?" His voice is rich and clear, and full of knowing joy as it is a question to which he already knows the answer. "Yes, buddy, it is." I glance back at him in the rearview and see him gazing back at me, his heart full to bursting, barely contained within his thin fleece vest and gentle constraints of a shoulder belt.

Then he turns and looks out at the highway and the world beyond, the river slipping beneath and behind us in a heartbeat as we begin the final stage of this epic journey to the city - THE CITY! - as the familiar woodlands and suburban roads of home fall to memory. There are other cars and trucks around us on the highway, obstacles we weave between and around with silent concentration as we traverse the distance between home and away.

"Are those the train tracks, Daddy?" he asks. He knows. "Yes, buddy, they are." I can feel his grin radiating warmth and delight behind me. "Those are where the train goes that Mommy takes." We have been on this road before, and seen the purple and silver trains running alongside us. "Will we see Mommy's train?" he asks. "I don't know, buddy."

"Maybe?" he asks. He doesn't like the suggestion of a no. He prefers a world open to possibilities. "We'll see? Can you say, "we'll see," Daddy?" I nod my head in assent. "Sure. We'll see, buddy. Maybe we'll see a train before we get there."

"And tunnels? How many tunnels will we see?" He is, in his way, remarkable. This is a road he's traveled a few times in his six years, and he has committed it to memory. The curves, the slow-rising hills to the right, the return of the river - winding elegant and serpentine - to his left as we hit the flats. The moment we slow down as we flow through the tolls, then the roar of the engine as speed of traffic rises to new crescendos of strategy and pursuit. It is a road I have driven hundreds of times, lost to the fugue state that lies between home and destination, my conscious mind drifting through the minutia of parking to be found, meetings to be attended, names to remember and hours to pass in the glacial tock of the second hand. It is a journey we now take together, with new eyes and infinite wonder, each mile rich with the magic of suggestion: of that which might find life in the mile yet to come.

A brief tunnel, and then we emerge — and before the words even begin to form in my mouth he cries out, "Fenway Park! Daddy, where's Fenway Park? Where's the Red Sox?" And I bite the inside of my mouth to staunch my pride and cap the eruption of knowing that my son has embraced (to some degree; to any degree, I do not care) that which has been such a defining element in my... and there it is. "The lights, buddy! The green building with lights!"

And the car floods with his smile, because he knows how delighted I am that he is asking, and he says, "There it is! That's the Red Sox park! That's..." and before he can even finish the sentence, the world shifts dark as we enter the one long tunnel and he overloads with happiness, literally bouncing in his chair, as the sodium lights spill their dirty yellow glow onto us in staccato braille pulse, as if this is the moment on the roller coaster when we plunge into darkness and we know that at any moment the world may shift and the earth open and swallow us whole as we plunge into fresh and wicked explorations of the nature of speed and terror and helpless laughing joy and

We emerge, blinking in the sudden sunlight of this early November morning, looking ahead to where the highway breaks and splinters and deposits us into the heart of a great city, transformed and ready to behold all that lies ahead. Together we watch a streetlight shift red and we glide to a momentary stop, and I steal the moment to glance back. His body is rigid, his expression rapt, as he stares out into the world. He sits apart, separated by glass and time and the omnipresent more that we will not make a part of this moment, waiting to hear the suggestion of something that is not a no, ready to open the door and discover all that may still lie ahead. "Are we here yet?" he asks.

"Almost," I tell him. Almost.