Inertia = Death. This was one of my Dad’s many maxims, passed on to me at such an early age I thought it a law as universal as “No Singing at the Dinner Table”. It wasn’t until I started attending middle school sleepovers that I realized all families didn’t adhere to the song-less supper rule. However, to be fair to my parents, most families didn’t have such a gregarious, tone-deaf, Broadway-musical-obsessed child. Not in Crete, Illinois, anyway.
This thing about inertia though, it's probably a large part of the reason I’m pushing 40 and have never had a real job, owned a home or committed to a yearlong gym membership. It’s probably why I’m writing this between pit stops on a Moroccan road trip without any clue as to where we’re going to lay our heads come Saturday. And it’s definitely why I was more than a little apprehensive to leave NYC and spend this past summer in the Midwest, worried that home would sink it’s claws into me and never let me leave. But I wanted our kids to have a summer at the lake with my mom and my 95-year old grandma. And to be honest, I wanted it for myself even more than that.
So we did. And it was an awesome. And no claws were sunk, only hugs and kisses and well-wishes goodbye. And then, five days ago, my grandma died. And here I am, free as a bird, (well, free as a bird with piss-poor potty-trained toddlers can be - I take full responsibility in that, btw) and there’s a huge part of me that wishes we could all be back home, in that place I spent all of my life trying not to get sucked back into, so we could properly mourn, whatever the fuck that means, if just for a few days. But this is what happens when I come to Africa. Grandma’s die. When I came here 13 years ago the other one did the same thing. I mean, what are the chances? And death at 95 is not a tragedy or a surprise. But it feels wrong to not be there with my mom and sister and brother and uncles and cousins. And when it gets dark in my head I think, Damn, Jordan, you’re always there for the party and never around for the clean up.
But then it gets light in my head and I think, you know, maybe my grandma’s closer to me now than she was a few days ago, when there were all those lakes and states and countries and oceans between us. Now there’s just the thin skin between life and death separating us, and who knows how separate those two really are, anyway?
Besides Canada and Mexico, my grandma never left the country. And even though she lived her whole life within 90 miles of her birthplace, she wasn’t inertia’s bitch. Not even close. She had three different careers, teaching in a one-room school house, owning an A&W Rootbeer stand, and going back to work after her and my grandpa sold the place to run her hometown’s bus system. She was fishing up until this past summer, playing poker like a shark, and never once questioning any of my hair-brained schemes, no matter how crazy she thought they were.
So this thing about inertia, I don’t think it has to be about traveling the world or pushing physical boundaries. I think it’s about pushing mental ones. To never let yourself get comfortable with what you know. To keep yourself open to a whole world of what you don’t.
Anyway, enough with the deep thoughts. Here are some more pics of our drive down the coast and across the Martian looking landscape of this crazy, beautiful country. First stop, Taghazout. Another super chill surf spot. We stopped for the afternoon and wanted to stay for a week, but we had a date with the desert that we couldn't miss.
After running our children ragged we got back in the car and drove to Taroudant, booking this random place on the way for $50/night. We were the only ones there. Going to be real hard to go back to a Super 8 after this.
And back in the car. Agdz or bust.
We finally rolled into Agdz just before sunset. We're staying in a 16th century kasbah. An interesting choice with toddlers, to say the least. I'll save it for the next post, but check out their faces walking into the joint. It kind of says it all.
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