sleep on the floor
There’s a Lumineers song that’s become my anthem. The first verse goes like this:
Pack yourself a toothbrush dear
Pack yourself a favorite blouse
Take a withdrawal slip
Take all of your savings out
’Cause if we don’t leave this town
We might never make it out
I was not born to drown
Baby come on
The song is called “Sleep on the Floor”.
The night before we leave Palo Alto, we do, in fact, all sleep on the floor. Dan and I sleep on our mattress, because our bedframe is already in the U-Haul. Mom sleeps on two of Dan’s crash pads, because in the end she failed to convince Dan that she really only needed one.
“I’m LITTLE,” she says. “My head will go here, and my feet will go there, and it will be FINE.”
I snuggle into the mattress, twisting and snuffling like a nesting puppy, making Dan laugh. Sleeping on the floor is so fun, I think. Maybe we don’t even need the bedframe. Maybe we could just live in an empty apartment with fluffy rugs and pillows everywhere.
“That’s ridiculous” says Dan. “Go to sleep.”
Whoops. Did I say that out loud?
In the morning I go for a three-mile run on my normal three-mile loop. It’s the last time on this loop, I think. I finish at the Starbucks and Dan and Mom are already there, eating pastries and drinking coffee. I get a coffee and we all walk back to the empty apartment, where Dan and I leave our keys on the dryer and check all the closets one last time.
Then we get into our respective cars — Mom in the U-Haul, Dan in the Civic, and me in Cal, the blue Subaru — and we drive.
I’ve downloaded a dozen podcasts, but I don’t want to listen to podcasts. I turn the music up loud and sing along, letting the lyrics scrub the space between my ears, feeling the smooth asphalt through the steering wheel. ’Cause if we don’t leave this town…baby come on.
We stop for gas and water in Oakdale. It’s hot and stuffy, and we all stand outside the Raley’s eating cold leftover Greek takeout from a little cardboard box. Then we climb back into the cars and head toward Yosemite.
At the park entrance, I text mom. “Turn left at Crane Flat,” I remind her. And then we’re climbing, up and up and up. We pass Olmstead Point, Tenaya Lake comes into view, and ahead of me, Dan puts his arm out the window and pumps his fist. I roll down my window and wave my arm around crazily. I start to laugh.
We go through the Meadows, slowing for gawking tourists. We climb again, past the permit station, past my favorite Tuolumne trailhead below Mt. Dana. The outbound side of the Tioga Pass kiosk isn’t staffed. “Pass on through” says the sign in the window, so I take my foot off the brake and let the car roll down the east side of the hill.
And then, something in my chest snaps. It’s as though the cord that’s been holding me to the Bay all these years suddenly breaks, sheared off on the steep shoulder of the Sierra Crest, rebounding and whacking something deep inside of me. I let out a strangled yell, exactly halfway between a laugh and a sob. I turn the music off, and then back on again, and then up and up and up until it pours out the car windows and I’m singing along on top of it, so loud my throat starts to burn, but I don’t care.
I was not born to drown…
I glide down the east side of the pass, past Tioga Lake, past Ellery Lake, past the dirt pullout where we’ve camped so many nights. The air feels incredibly clear. The sky looks incredibly bright. The world, somehow, is totally different.
