The Way

‘Whenever things get difficult, I want to get away.’

Here I was, in the same town, at the same age as my father was, living in the UK, though, with no kids, no business, and none of the certainty his generation seemed to have, and mine doesn’t.

When we lived in California as a family, we often went on road trips. I can’t say what it was — a desire to explore this new, strange country that we’d just moved to or a need to fit in with the culture of the open road that America is all about. I remember that the four of us — my parents, my sister Kate, and I — would get in the car, our red Toyota Camry, and drive, sometimes for hours.

My father would crank up the volume, and Fastball would be blaring from the speakers:

They made up their minds
And they started packing
They left before the sun came up that day
An exit to eternal summer slacking
But where were they going without ever knowing the way?

I was sitting in the backseat with my sister, our seatbelts around us. Mine was hurting my neck, and I constantly wanted to take it off but was afraid my parents would notice.

Back in Russia, nobody, not even the drivers — especially not the taxi drivers — put their seatbelts on.

“Ah, shut up!” Abdulla, a taxi driver from Central Asia, would snap, clicking the seatbelt behind his back as though silencing an unruly child. To him, the car manufacturer’s obsession with safety was a personal insult — a ceaseless beeping accompanied by a flashing red symbol on the…