California Road Trip, July 1969
At 91, my father can still tell you how many miles
he traveled in a yellow station wagon stuffed
with us six children and my mother riding shotgun
from Chicago to California and back, the exact
gas mileage he got, how many KOAs we camped at,
how many national parks we visited along the way.
What I can tell you is how the red dirt at our KOA
in Oklahoma covered our sneakers, shorts, everything,
in a rusty patina as if we’d landed on the Red Planet.
What I can tell you is how the eight of us circled
a picnic table at a camp site tucked so high
in the mountains of Yosemite that snow piles
remained from last winter, and nearby,
a mountain stream, our only water source,
burbled. In that moment, for once, we were all
silent, no teasing, no laughing, just listening
to the transistor radio, through the static
hearing the words, “That’s one small step
for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
And what else I can tell you is how a lifeguard
sprinted into the ocean to rescue my father
who we all thought had only been waving
to us from the plastic raft which seemed
to be headed for Hawaii. Could we blame
him for seeking momentary escape
from his fixed position as the sun
around which we all revolved?
Now, when I hear the words “undertow”
and “riptide,” I’m launched back to that beach,
to 13 years old, where I stand motionless on hot
sand, feel the pull of some dark alternate universe,
stare out at the waves, at my father drifting away
until the lifeguard reaches him, brings him back
to dry land, and I start
breathing again.
• • •
Marianne Murphy Zarzana teaches writing at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota. Her poetry has appeared recently in Stoneboat, Pasque Petals, and Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems. Her writing blog, “Writing in This Moment,” may be found on her website: http://mariannezarzana.com.