we’re driving home from playing cards with friends. the night looks as though someone has dumped tar on the world. fields of black.
and i think about the 30 people who are missing. the ones the captain abandoned, the man who ran the costa concordia into a rock then lied to passengers and saved only himself. refusing to apologize for lives lost, and what kind of man does this, i wonder?
trent at the wheel and i feel safe with him. he’s a good driver. the headlights shimmering.
i look at him now, his strong profile in the outline of a soul-less moon and i know he wouldn’t have, but i need to ask anyway. “you wouldn’t have left them, would you? those people on the ship?” and he looks at me, and he looks fierce, like a warrior.
“no,” he says, quietly, and then he pounds his fist against the wheel but it doesn’t scare me. just underlines his clenched jaw. “it disgusts me,” he says. “what has happened to us? where are the good men?”
i think about our boys. how little and true they are, how innocent and pure, and i know he’s thinking it too: how do we parent right, in a world gone wrong?
we turn into neerlandia which has two churches back to back, a co-op and a school, and one intersection, and then down the gravel road to his parents to pick up the boys, asleep beneath feather ticks on the farm.
“i want our boys to stand up for justice,” he says now. “i want them to fight for truth. to be full of honor, to be brave, to have integrity. i want them to be like the men of old… generations gone before.”
his words stir me. he sounds like a preacher but i know he’s sincere, and we’re turning into his parents’ driveway now. parking, and he turns off the headlights.
and we sit there, holding hands, in the middle of the dark.
linking up with dear sarah at emerging mummy:
(thank you so much for cheering me on, friends… your kind notes on the last post–wow. incredible. i am going to be slowly making my way to your blogs over the next few days. love you so…)