The Drifting Mind

“Where does your mind wander?” she asked, turning her gaze from the rolling fields of wheat as they cruised along the highway.

He looked at her questioningly. That was his thing, he didn’t always have to ask her to interpret — he had grown used to her seemingly random, disconnected questions, knowing they would be further explained at the cue of a raised eyebrow.

“I mean, when you’re lost in thought and find your eyes glazed over and you have to consciously return to the present moment. Where do your thoughts go?”

She waited quietly, knowing he wasn’t ignoring her, merely thinking. She had asked herself the same question about 200 miles earlier and had been thinking about it ever since.

“I guess it depends,” he responded. “Sometimes if I hear a song from when I was in high school or college, it takes me back to memories of friends. Like when I hear the song Photograph by Nickelback I think of this bonfire we had my senior year — ”

“High school?”

“Yeah, high school. Anyways, we went out to my friend Joey’s place, and we were out there till maybe four in the morning, just drinking and laughing and talking about all the things we were going to do with our lives. It was just a nothing kinda night but I always go back there.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It was.”

The silence returned. It was the comfortable silence one feels when they know they’re in the company of a kindred spirit.

“My favorite place my mind wanders is when I smell sweet grass.” He gave a short laugh, his eyes wandering away from the road for a moment to see her staring at him. “It brings a stream of memories — seeing you for the first time at that painful freshman orientation, the first time I made you laugh and you started snorting.”

She giggled and he smiled.

“It makes me think of the day I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life memorizing the way your eyes light up when you smile.”

She looked up as the smell of sweet grass rolled through the open windows.