Road To Virginia

Evan Chen

The bleeding colors of the sunset spilled through my car window in a bruised purple hue that blended with the shadowy night sky. Inside the car, it was quiet, save for the low hum of the engine. My mom, hands tight on the wheel, drove in the direction of the luminescent nighttime glow as the colors darkened. She let go of the wheel with one hand, her knuckles pale and colorless, reaching over for a sip of her dark coffee. It was her third of the night, each sip sounding more distant beside me.

I looked at the navigation, tracing our route from our house in New Jersey to my father’s condo in Virginia. Four hours had passed, with only two more to go. As the GPS flickered softly, I felt nerves and unease stirring in my stomach, rubbing its back against my thoughts. I closed my eyes as the mellow night air brushed my cheeks. Fatigue wrapped around me like a motherly hug, and my eyelids grew heavy. The night began swallowing the last remnants of the sunset, leaving my blank mind to converse with the vibrating engine.

I glanced at my mom, her hawk-like eyes focused on the disappearing road as if hunting for prey. In that moment, a question flickered in the back of my mind: Was her intense focus a reflection of her own dreams or of her effort to help me chase mine? I contemplated her life, which was a mystery to me. Every day, even during the weekends, she leaves the house for a stretch of time, for reasons unknown to me. I notice the hefty bags under her eyes in the mirror’s reflection. What if, in another world, I never existed? What would she have done differently?

In this parallel life, my mother would have never left her apartment in New York. She would

have danced in playhouses on Broadway, on tour in Europe, along the trails of the Great Wall beneath fluorescent stars; and she would have slept soundly, free of stress, on her first-class flights to Dubai and Paris. I can see her in a different car, running her fingers through her hair—a waterfall of silky black without a hint of stress or gray.

But in this life, I carry pieces of her sacrifices within me. I live in the silent spaces between my mother’s sacrifices and my own dreams. I live not just for myself but for the life she didn’t fully experience and for the dreams she set aside to make room for mine. I am bound by both gratitude and guilt, knowing that the road I travel is one she paved with her own blood, sweat, and tears.

I truly believe I am a testament to what my mother has given up. I live for the dreams she kept quietly tucked away, ambitions she never openly expressed. My goal, as her son and companion, is to prove her sacrifices have not gone in vain. Each achievement I reach is a piece of the life she once imagined, and with every success, I hope she sees, in her own eyes, those dreams filled.

The car slowly came to a stop as the phone turned off. I looked at the rearview mirror, seeing my mother still focused on the road ahead. I stepped out, each step feeling lighter than the one before, as I felt as though I was approaching something, not a place, but a realization that was stationed at the edge of my mind. The door opened before I even got to my father’s house as he stood by the doorway embracing me with a warm smile. In that moment I wanted to see my mother again, to see her eyes, and a sense of overwhelming joy flooded through my joints. I turned my head back toward my mother, but her car was already gone.