Subliminal Messages

When we drive cross-country, we rent a convertible. If not a convertible, why bother?

And it has a tape deck, so that we can alternate connecting our mp3 players. (Those transmitter things are annoying in big cities, where all the frequencies are already being used.) Whoever isn’t driving gets to DJ.

I want to hear you sing to me.

I take along my laptop, to download all the pictures we take with the digital camera. Of places and people. Of each other. Of us.

We buy a cooler and snacks and jars of peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. Eventually, we get bored on the road and have a food fight.

There are parts of you I wouldn't mind seeing smeared with marshmallow fluff.

I buy colored pencils; tape and glue and scissors; and two small notebooks. One for me, one for you. The one for you is a gift. You can’t touch it until home.

Everywhere we go, I buy postcards. Every place we eat, I keep the receipt, or a matchbook, or a placemat. Every motel we stop in, I steal stationery and take tourist brochures. (And the pens as well.) When it is your turn to drive, I cut them all up and glue them every which way into both of our notebooks. But I still watch you drive.

I like to watch you when you're not looking. I've done it before.

In my notebook, I write everything I feel, everything I see, everything I think. We travel so long, I have to buy another. I take them home with me for future reference. One day, I make a play of it all. (But don’t worry; some secrets are ours alone.)

Your notebook is different. Not random thoughts and endless babbling, but a piece of art. The postcards and the pictures and the paraphernalia are personalized. On every page I write a thought—a thought I think about you. While you are driving. While you are sleeping. While you are showering. Some of them I tell you; some of them are a surprise. But either way, you have something to remember this by.

Something you can touch.

One day, we watch the sun set into the Pacific, and it is time to go home.

You won't forget.