Stumbling into a storybook
This one time at a Writers' Retreat...
In early August, I went to Massachusetts for a writers’ retreat, and one afternoon my friends and I went to the beach. The beach was separated from the parking lot by a waist-high rock wall or was it sand dunes with grass? I didn’t take a photo and cannot be sure. In the opening to access the beach was a long and wide, blue rubber mat. The mat ended about a third of the distance to the water's edge and provided a sturdy path into the sand.
As I stepped onto this blue-mat path something had popped into my mind. I stopped and yelled to my friends. Okay, well not yelled—I spoke much louder than our casual conversations we’d been having walking the streets of a coastal New England town in the middle of the day on a Wednesday.
“Guys! Oh… This is.. This… I’ve got to tell you!!”
Because they’ve known me for two years and because they are writers who understand that lightning strikes of memory can be gems not just burdens, they held space and withheld judgement while I said my thoughts out loud.
“There’s a book called The Runaway Road that I had as a kid. There’s this road and it usually takes the family to the mountains for vacation, year after year the same, and then one year the road just goes off the rails. It twists and turns and no one knows where it’s going until it finally stops at the beach. And …and… It looks just like this…
“Well the road in the book was yellow, but still…This Is The Runaway Road!”
I was gushing and knew it. It was an accomplishment (and a testament to the people with me) that I even voiced my excitement. More often I let all that stay in my head and consciously work not to reveal my emotions physically. But this time I let myself be ridiculously excited.
My friends listened with a comfortable balance of sincerity and levity, and then we went about our visit. We stood near the shore line chatting and taking in the view: a wide flat soft-sand beach, cliffs with expensive houses, birds scouring for food in the shallow surf, and at either end of the beach rocky-edges that curved, distinguishing it as a cove.
I took off my right shoe, peeled off my sock and tucked it in my shoe then did the same with the left. I rolled up my jeans, approached the dribbling surf, and dug my toes into the wet sand. I misjudged the tide creeping back up the beach in the late afternoon and got the bottom of my rolled up jeans wet. It was silly. It was fun. It may have looked like I was playing at the beach—but I was playing inside of a book. A book where the road and everyone chasing it found joy and relief at the beach.
I didn’t know that one of my friends took a photo of the moment. But I am so grateful. I even made the live-photo my lock screen for my phone so I see it multiple times a day. Because when I look at it I see…? The eternal child inside all grown ups? No, that’s not quite it.
I see myself as a whole person, ageless. I am acting on a feeling without self-conscious analysis. I am using my whole body without any negative consequences. I see how past experiences of shame and embarrassment about my body are being comforted by playful physical movement in the present. All from a memory of a book I read as a kid. (And a thoughtful friend documenting the moment.)
I checked my childhood copy of The Runaway Road by Stan Mack. It was from a Parents Magazine subscription and published in 1980. I turned seven in 1981. (I swear I didn’t plan it. The origin of this project is connected to how often age 7 seems to pop up for me.)
So I would have read the book when I was 6, 7, and beyond. My kids read it at grandma’s house; my daughter even wrote her name in the book with the date she read it (a habit my mother taught me and her). It was one week after her 8th birthday.
More often I let all that stay in my head and consciously work not to reveal my emotions physically. But this time I let myself be ridiculously excited.
The illustration on the page where the road reaches the beach does not match what I saw when I walked on the blue path into the beach. Because of course it doesn’t. Memories rarely make carbon copies, and illustrations aren’t meant to imprint strict representations but to trigger a child’s imagination.
Inside the book is an illustrated map of where the Runaway Road ((Route 100) goes. The “Big Ocean” is on the right side of the land, there’s an “East Bay,” and Route 100 originates in “New City” at the lower tip of a peninsula. The scale and landmarks are fictitious, but I feel confident that whatever beach The Runaway Road ran to, it was on the East Coast of the United States.
This speaks to the soul of every kid who loved books SO much...of me as a kid that loved books SO much. That you allow your adult self to engage this younger piece of you, in community with other writers, is so powerful and moving. And the fact that the memory turns out not to align 1:1 only makes the reflection more complicated and deep. I’m so glad you found this space that brought you into that memory, and I’ll add that feeling of joy to my memory of walking in that very same space!
Love this! The playfulness, the almost—no not almost—the kid-part giddiness. And not because I’m a teacher or kidlit author whose brain is going crazy about a road book, but because I’m right there digging my toes into the sand with you. Almost (yes, almost this time) literally. I’m just home from a walk on the beach. Keep playing!