On "now"

My drive to school takes me across three counties, all of which I associate with childhood and sitting in the backseat of my mother's car (riding shotgun, she always claimed, was too dangerous for us) and going up the Peninsula to see family. I remember those trips as being nearly daily, though I'm sure, of course, that they weren't. Driving up here, enamored by the trees and by the fog that each day creeps across the crests of the mountains like a persistent caress, I plotted out my future at each freeway exit: Here is where we will buy a home. Here is where we will take our children when it's sunny. Here is where we'll park on the side of the road, before we have children and when we are still young and reckless (though he'd laugh at that; I know oftentimes he wishes I'd be reckless), and wander into the forest, hand in hand, to lose ourselves for hours, maybe days.

Still, though, driving I flinch each time another vehicle crosses my path; I replay scenes of accidents I've witnessed in the media and in real life. I always think that right now would be the worst time to die, and it's especially easy to do that this year: we have our entire future ahead of us, stretching out like a road.

Time will tell, I suppose. In the meantime all I have is right now: a bench in a half-sheltered courtyard that I expect by next year will have grown familiar, clouds speeding over me as though chased. Clean air, sharp and cold, that prickles against my throat when I inhale.