The Way Back
On the journey and the destination.
I was driving back to Boston with my brother, Hunter.
The rain was coming down sideways in that miserable, bone-cold way the Northeast loves to save for late November. Our cousin Vinny (yes, literally) had gotten married the night before, so we were both running on leftover joy and minimal quality sleep.
Somewhere along the way, this drive back became ritual; I take the wheel, Hunter takes aux, and once we hit the Merritt Parkway, he puts on Views and lets it run from front to back. It started the year he had his first real breakup, when it felt like everything in his life was ending and starting at the same time. It’s dark by then. It’s cold. Drake is built for this stretch of I-95. For that haunting limbo between holidays and whatever comes after.
Last week, mid-drive, I asked Hunter if he ever associates certain stretches of road with memories or songs or moments the way I do.
He stared at me for a second and said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
And maybe he’s right. Maybe it really is just me, this strange, sentimental wiring that turns highways into altars and exit signs into portals. But once I start paying attention to the road, I realize I’ve been doing it my whole life.
Rt 9 in Chestnut Hill will always hold the ghost of my old job, the 7 a.m. tears and Throwing Fits episodes I clung to like life rafts on the way to my awful first job, the blurry late-night sprints home after eighteen-hour days when I drove faster than I should’ve because the only thing I wanted in the world was sleep.
On the Pike in Framingham, I can still feel the weight of dead-stop traffic coinciding with the massive fight with my first girlfriend over semester grades, the two hours of silence that said everything we weren’t brave enough to say in the moment.
Worcester makes me think of the Holy Cross tour with my dad. We got chili cheese dogs at Coney Island, and he obliterated a student bathroom so violently that I knew I could never, in good conscience, attend that institution. And Kyler Murray was drafted eighth overall by the A’s as soon as the tour ended.
On the way back, Dad hit a pothole so deep it nearly swallowed the car whole. The pothole’s gone now, but I still move out of that lane every time like I’m dodging a ghost.
The Charlton rest stops have their own twin identities. Heading west is boys’ trips to the Jersey Shore. Heading east is me needing to pee and refusing to stop because I’m basically at my apartment. The state trooper who lives rent-free at the Connecticut border has permanently programmed me to slam the brakes when I see a Ford Explorer without a roof rack. By then, my left elbow has usually fallen asleep from resting on the window for too long. And somewhere before Hartford, there’s a red STORAGE sign that marks the gravitational shift toward home, the moment I stop feeling like a satellite in deep space and start feeling tethered again.
Hartford reminds me of Action Bronson because of his interview on Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart’s podcast, and now I can’t unpair them. Sincerely, Mr. Wonderful is genuinely a masterful album.
When I used to drive this route with my dad, we’d listen to The Rewatchables and talk movies, and I still feel that muscle memory every time.
The massive downhill into the New Haven tunnel makes me feel like I’m driving the Monaco Grand Prix.
And then there’s the Merritt, our sanctuary. Views with Hunter. Two Door Cinema Club when it’s just me. The undulating hills always rock Hunter to sleep by the time Views ends. It’s like the road is singing him a lullaby.
Westchester is Connor Country. I get taken back to Walter’s hot dogs or the Vineyard Thanksgiving pilgrimage when going home didn’t quite feel like home, even though technically it was still an option.
The “Welcome to New Jersey” sign demands “Home” by LCD Soundsystem. For a second, I always feel like Tony Soprano in the opening credits. The James Gandolfini rest stop makes me think of calling Brian while we’re both on opposite road trips, him Idaho to California, me Boston to Jersey. Different trajectories, same heartbeat. Didn’t one of our uncles allegedly witness a kneecapping here?
Whatever’s playing, I blast it as I get back into my hometown. Suburban North Jersey has never seen a sensitive white boy with this much motion before.
But the roads that really matter, the ones I try not to think about too long, are the ones that hurt.
Rt 10 in Denville, driving Mom to the colonoscopy that changed everything. It took years to understand that none of it was my fault. That no amount of driving could’ve changed the outcome.
Rt 46 in West Orange, the funeral escort to the cemetery, the almond-paste smell in the air that felt like grief announcing itself. Rt 17, the dealerships my mom repped, where she let me test drive a Lamborghini once because she understood joy better than anyone. The one time I wasn’t allowed to tag along was when she was picking out my car for me to surprise me at Christmas.
The two things I did when I got it that Christmas were to turn off the automatic speed limiter and crank the bass on the sound system all the way up. They still feel like the right decisions.
For weeks after my childhood dog died, I wouldn’t get the interior cleaned because his hair was still on the dash from sticking his head out the window. Some of it is probably still there.
The Shore roads feel lighter. John Sterling calling Yankees games in the July traffic, always rolling the windows down over the bridge into Point Pleasant to breathe in the salty air. The Bar A night when Lerm forgot his license, drove all the way back to North Jersey, interrupted my dad’s poker game to retrieve it, came back down, and promptly got food poisoning from bad limes. My entire adolescence is scattered across these stretches of asphalt.
I judge songs in three places now: my phone, my AirPods, and the car. If it doesn’t hit in the car, it doesn’t get added to a playlist.
My winter jacket and the steering wheel are stained from the time I tried to dig the car out after it got snowed in with cat litter like an idiot.
There’s still a streak of red paint on the driver’s seat from when John, Connor, and I painted a pong table sophomore year and I sat on a wet corner without realizing.
And then there’s Brian. The summer after graduation, when we had to be in Point Pleasant at 5:15, usually an hour and a half away on a good day, and we were packing at 4:05. We made it by 5:13. Couldn’t have done it without his aux. He played Free Bird, old Kanye, and a lot of the Stones. The car felt electric.
The next morning, I drove him to Newark Airport at dawn, the air cold and quiet. This time, he queued a lot of Zach Bryan, Mt. Joy, and Briston Maroney. We were in far less of a rush. I cried in silence the whole way home as the sun rose. I didn’t know when I’d see him again.
I’m not good at goodbyes. Or maybe I’m too good at them.
I’ve got two drives left with this car that’s carried it all. Hunter won’t be there for either; he’ll already be home. I’ll play Views anyway. For him. For me. For every version of us that existed in these seats.
I got this car when I was seventeen: pimply, nervous, and terrified of everything. I’ll be twenty-five in three months. Less pimply, less nervous, less terrified.
But the truth is, it’s held me through more miles of change than I ever realized. And long after it’s gone, I know I’ll still carry the road. The songs. The ghosts. The stupid little rituals. The exits that shaped me. The way back patterned into scars I never want to heal.
So I’ll know the route by heart, even when I’m not the one driving anymore.