Driveway Nights

Greetings loyal readers! In case anyone is interested, we're battening down the hatches for one of those good ol' Texas thunderstorms. My sister and I were going to head down to the courts for a killer badminton match when she pointed out the curiously two-tone clouds that were roiling around like a lava lamp on steroids. Now the rain is pounding down on my window, while I stay warm and dry and feeling comfortably artsy, with my laptop and candles lit and a dog nearby.

But, all of that has nothing to do with what I intended to post. I was driving home a few nights ago from a college bible study that my church has organized (perhaps more on this at a later date). It is probably the first night driving I have done since getting home. Now I must tell you, I love driving at night. The lights flashing past my window in the city or the cool, quiet country sounds floating in with the breeze. Driving with the windows down at night always makes me feel a little antsy, like something exciting could break loose any minute, so I better be ready. I was greatly enjoying my ride home when I pulled into my subdivision. I rounded a corner and saw at a house a few blocks down from ours two meditative teens sitting in the driveway, one a boy with long unkempt hair and one a girl with a ponytail, legs sprawled out in front of her. There was also another very skinny girl kind of dancing around the driveway in a distracted manner.

Wow, what a blast from the past. This sparked sudden flashbacks of warm summer nights lit by the streetlamps and cooled by the breeze. Laying on the hot cement and getting bit by mosquitos. A good philosophical or religious debate that was never really settled because someone was always obfuscating more than the conversation could bear. Walks down to the lake shore or pick-up basketball games in the dark. Many of my best high school memories are connected to driveways. There was the time Eddius came after us with his squirt gun while we waited on the porch for him to answer the door. Or playing horse in Hope's driveway where the ball would roll halfway down the block if it got away because the driveway was so steep. Sitting in each other's cars for hours in the winter, just to get a little privacy. Talking trash to the middle schoolers over our basketball prowess (they may have had the skills, but we had the height). The delivery of Eddius' famous line: "Got any good people to talk about?" That awful night we came back so late from Francis' house that Mom thought we were dead. The day Eddius asked both Hope and I to the prom and we sat out in the rain to pound out the details. And our last conversation, where Eddius reassured us that just to be realistic we should probably expect to never hear from him again. Rolling past that driveway was like looking at a picture of myself from only a couple of years ago (can it be such a short time has passed?) and seeing with mirror-like accuracy the way life used to be.

I look back at my high school self with envy and no small degree of frustration. To the current me, it seems like I had it so good back then, and didn't appreciate it a bit, caught up in complaining about how little there was to do, or how I wished this or that was different. I never appreciated the simple fact that I had friends to sit with me in the driveway until late at night, talking nonsense or searching for the most sublime of truths.

I find myself daydreaming more this summer than ever before about how things might have been if I had chosen to stay in Omaha for college, or if my family had at least not moved away. Because I am definitely a "grass is always greener" kind of person, I think, "Of course, if only this or this would have happened, everything would be lovely." In my thinking brain, I know that isn't true. But I still cringe a little at the sight of someone else enjoying the driveways and summer nights that are no longer mine.