I’m getting into the little Honda Civic my step-in mom is letting me borrow for the two weeks I’m back in the place I was born, formed, and launched from almost six years ago–Madison, Wisconsin.  No longer home, but forever the soil where the seeds of me sprouted.  My roots.  This Civic is half the size of the truck I use to drive my home around now—a 32-foot travel trailer.

As I lower myself into a seat barely above the ground, I roar off down the main drag of East Washington Avenue and all the familiar sites: the crack house looking Smart Studios where Nirvana recorded Nevermind, my old rival high school, the place where the 24/7 diner used to be where I had my first full-time job.  It’s all familiar and alI different.  I’m different.  Used to biking now more than driving now, using mile markers rather than exit numbered signs where I’m now living and moving around a two-mile by four-mile island.  I’m unsure of myself as I merge onto the interstate, which is weird on a road I’ve driven millions of times.  I turn on the radio for the soothing yet empowering combo music provides.  Drift Away is playing.  Of course it is.

Drift Away is mine and my dad’s song.  It’s taken his place in my life, announcing his presence as spirit. It’s not only apropos because he always drifted in and out of my life, our relationship written in morse code: dots of time together broken by dashes of distance.  But because we’d both fallen in love with the song through the Canadian acapella group that wowed him so much, he brought them to America. The Nylons.  My sister and I would watch their first show with the audience and the second show backstage, feeling the heat of the lights and the red velvet curtain brushing our arms.  My eyes flitted between peaking out at the audience who couldn’t see me to my crush, the soprano Mark. After the show, we’d hang with them in the green room.  It was as close to fame as I’d ever been and it made my already cool dad even cooler to me.

The summer before my senior year, after finally lobbying my mother hard enough, I got to go live with my dad.  My job as a bagger at the nearby grocery store, where I packed up many pig’s feet and snouts wrapped in cellophane on a styrofoam tray, planted the seeds of vegetarianism in me.  I’d just been talking about living in this neighborhood with Cara as we walked from the festival to her car.  And now here the song was coming on to match it.  And right when I needed it.  

Memories come flooding back of that summer.  Dad taught me to drive and I got my license.  Cruising windy roads to his good friend’s country bungalow where we’d listen to albums of great music all afternoon.  Dairy Queen drive-thru on Sundays—the one treat his diabetic diet could afford.  He took me to his fancy hairdresser where the locks of my permed big hair style iconic of the 80s fell to the floor, half my head cropped short in some avante garde asymmetrical fashion I was emulating from a Rolling Stone magazine on his coffee table.  

When Prince’s Raspberry Beret video premiered, I ran across the parking lot from work, pounded up the steps and barged through the door to hear him yell from the living room, “I’ve already got it on!!”  MTV would play it every hour on the hour for 24 hours and I’d sleep in fifty-five minute increments that night.  Setting my alarm for each showing.  In my bedroom at home, a life size cardboard cutout of Prince on his Purple Rain motorcycle sat in the corner and directly in my eyeline as I fell to sleep.  It had been a display in my dad’s friend’s record store and he’d gotten it for me once the promotion was over.

Shortly after I graduated college, he drifted out of my life for the last time.  Unmooring me.  All the religious pomp and circumstance I’d invested in over the years, all the times I’d prayed or clung to a Bible story for comfort—it offered me no comfort when it came to the topic of death.  Dad’s dying kicked me over to the spiritual realm where I sought and found the only acceptable answer: there is no death. Uncle Kracker’s remake of Drift Away was released about the same time to announce his presence still with me—I could say to the ether, “I need my dad right now” and this song would come on the car radio. Dad’s presence would then linger like he was riding shotgun. Training my mind to go beyond the physical evidence of what I saw and touched, I found everyone I loved still here. Their bodies left, but their love stayed. Keeping step with me moving through life.

George Michael’s Faith follows as if God Himself is the DJ, reminding me of what it took to sustain such seeking.  The same thing it takes now driving this car. The same thing a life of adventure requires.

My dad wasn’t always there when I needed him, but he’s sure got a way of showing up now when I need him most.  Pumping me up, giving me company and confidence.  And no doubt it was his adventurous genes at play when I decided to live the gypsy life on the road.