I am on a driving tour of the west. It started as the “Grandchildren Tour”. I have not seen them in years. In the thousand miles driven, I have had much time to think, and have renamed the journey “The Grand Reconnect Tour”.

Eighteen hours behind the wheel of even a very fine, thoroughbred, car, becomes monotonous. There is just so much music, talk, and sports a person can listen to before it all runs together and blurs into indistinguishable noise. I turn it all off. Silence.

My brain kicks in and I begin to think. More noise. My thoughts are a jumble of the things I have heard and seen in the past hours, but soon the thought patterns settle into reflection. I reflect on how my grandchildren have grown and how excited and anxious I am to see them. I think of friends I have not seen in decades and the excitement and anxiety grow. I begin to reflect on myself. Not the most pleasant thing to do, but is this not the real reason I am making this trip?

Self-evaluation is never easy, and is most often painful as we seem to gloss over the many wonderful things we have done with our lives and begin to focus on the things that need improvement. Often the guy staring back from that mirror is not the most pleasant fellow to look upon. The anxiety takes on a new intensity.

I want to turn back. At home, I know my status. I am comfortable there, and I ask myself, why would these friends and family even want to see me after all these years? Isn’t my presence an intrusion into their settled lives? I can’t go home. To grow, we must push beyond comfort, we must explore and stretch. I press on, wondering what mirrors those I am going to visit are holding for me to stare into.

My first stop is to reconnect with my best friend from my youth, his sister, his son, and a mutual friend from college. As I drive, not having seen them in nearly fifty years, I cannot envision them in any other form than young. I know that I am not the same after so many years. Will I recognize them? Will they still love me as they once did? Oh, to turn around and go home…

I need not have feared. Although they have aged, married, had children, divorced, lived life, they are the same. They are my now old, old friends, and I love how easily we slip back into the banter and behavior we used with each other so long ago.

The mirror is in the hands of my best friend’s son. When we first meet, he is distant, and I wonder at what his father has told of those bygone years. As I sit across the dinner table from him, and stories are recounted, he begins to thaw. He realizes there is more here than just friends sharing dinner. This is a recounting of history. These are the stories that shaped his father, and I can see acceptance of both his dad, and me.

We picked up where we left off, and wrote another chapter in our book and included a new character. I come away happy, but still wondering about what lies ahead with the next group? Will it be the same? No reason for it not to be, but I still drive on, wondering, but no longer fearing.

David Wilson Atwood is a local writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He is the author of Where the Mockingbird Sang, A Novel of the Civil War and I Followed the Wolf, Buck's Story, the prequel/sequel to Where the Mockingbird Sang. He may be contacted, and his other works viewed at: www.starchasers.us, or david@starchasers.us.