postcards from the edge

life is not a postcard. nothing ever looks as good in person as the picture on the back. and real stories don't fit into that little square, no matter how small you write. nobody sends postcards of the back parking lot of a chinese restaurant with two children playing in a drainage ditch and two adults sitting in front of the dumpsters, one crying hard enough to make her shoulders shake. there aren't postcards that say: "be glad you're not here, because here isn't what I thought it'd be like. here is just like everywhere else, only farther away." nobody sends postcards to say: "when I shrug and laugh that we don't know what we're doing with our lives, I forget about days like today. the days when it is hard to find a decent place to eat and the directions include unmarked roads we can't ever seem to find. days when we're all sick of each other and this whole crazy plan seems like a huge mistake. I forget that waiting for the next adventure often includes huge chunks of actual waiting." nobody sends postcards like that because it is too much like real life. and maybe that is the real lesson: life on the road is just as real. my children can be just as whiny. I can feel just as bogged down or just as overwhelmed as I would at home. who I am doesn't fundamentally change based on geographic location. if I don't like chinese food in north carolina, I still won't like it in maine. and I can be just as miserable about things that hardly even matter in our car as I can in our kitchen. and for now, this IS our real life. I kept telling the camp staff that this summer: "stop waiting for real life to start after college. this IS your real life!" and this is mine. on the road, in the car, in a state of flux I'm not sure I want to be in: all of this is just as real as the rest of it. even the fall-aparts in the middle of nowhere.

but there are reasons to be glad life is not a postcard. real stories can never fit in that square, no matter how small you write because real stories are big and need hand motions and funny voices and interruptions and digressions. and if folks don't send postcards of the back parking lots of chinese restaurants, they'll miss out on some pretty amazing moments. moments that need to be recorded, filed away, because those are the real stories of the journey.