There's no such thing as the holidays for a baker, so I take my breaks between other holidays. Christmas ended in Kansas City. All the pies had been picked up. I baked three more and drove them to my family in Kentucky with Josh and Shawn. We'd never been on a road trip like that just the three of us. We had a few days to spare before I had to bake again for New Year's Eve. Josh took off work. Shawn's been unemployed since he quit serving at a restaurant that ended up closing two months later. The cards fell as if we'd cheated. We'd talked about driving to my hometown in the summer, but we couldn't say no to the time we had. Everyone's getting older. I hadn't been home for Christmas since 2018. This would have to do.
Shawn warned us he'd get carsick, and he did, just once, on the same country road where I'd first learned to drive decades prior. You know about Kentucky and horses, but all we saw were cows. I thought about what it would look like to move back there. All that green space. It's a lot like where I live now, but no offense, prettier. We drove by houses older than most of the buildings in Kansas City. And people still live in them.
We stayed in a short-term rental across from the courthouse in my hometown. The building was old. So old that if it had any ghosts, they were too tired to play. Shawn says he saw something pass down the hallway, but it was beyond shape, having forgotten who it ever was and why it haunted this place at all. I slept with earplugs in and could still hear, as if underwater, a huge truck roar up and down Main Street. Shawn saw it shoot flames from its exhaust and couldn't believe it. Well, I could. The next morning, Josh went to a coffee shop across the street for breakfast and brought back the rest of a very good avocado toast to share with me. A place changes and stays the same at almost the same rate. I could believe the demonic truck, but I couldn't believe the avocado toast.
Shawn took a nap one afternoon while Josh and I visited the Bluegrass Heritage Museum. It's a great place run by one of my former teachers. She was in that day. We hadn't seen each other since the late 90s. We talked for probably an hour. I introduced her to Josh, and she told him this was the most she'd ever heard me speak. She disappeared into an office and came back with a yearbook. "You should be in this one," she said, and I was.
We spent just enough time with my family to leave us excited for the next visit. My mom cooked all the favorite winter foods and something extra for Josh—chocolate Coca-Cola cake. He never liked dessert before we met. My dad took us out to eat at the restaurant where his gall bladder failed him a few years prior. "Not because of the food," he said. The other diners stared at us when we walked in because Shawn wore a genuine raccoon skin cap I bought him from the Peddler's Mall. Everywhere we go, people look at Shawn, but he would complain if they didn't.
On the way out of town, we stopped by my grandmother's house. We visited for not long enough. When she stood up to hug me goodbye, she said she'd done so too fast and become lightheaded. She asked me to hug her just a while longer until she was steady. In the car, Shawn said, "You know she wasn't dizzy, right? She just didn't want to let you go." I knew that, of course, just like I know there's never enough time anywhere but on the road, where it seems like no matter how fast you go, there's all the time in the world.