I wonder what she looks like. If she is still the tall, slim one. The one I always felt substandard next to. The one I envied all the days of my childhood and into early adulthood. The one who I looked to for acceptance but never felt like I received it.

Music jumbles away in my rusty old Ford. My youngest son and I sing along to the songs on the radio. After a while, we put in a CD that he compiled years before. One that he titled Songs for a Rainy Day. My old Ford does not have iPod outlets and we are forced into using old technology. We laugh at the choices he’s selected. My youngest son always knows how to take that nervous edge off me.

My unemployed middle son has come with us to get away from his life too. He never sings out loud, but he does lip-sync all the words. Even as a little boy he never sang or whistled or hummed. My hope is that one day he just will.

A trio of excited people, approaching the unknown. The farther south we drive, the darker the clouds are across the sky. The radio mentions the possibility of sleet. We may be driving into a storm, but we keep driving, two voices singing out the words to the songs on the radio while the third nods in rhythm to the music.

I burst out laughing when “Bad Moon Rising” starts to play.

“What’s so funny?” asks Lance. I tell them the story of how my mother, their grandmother, used to sing “Don’t go out in your nightie!” instead of the real lyrics and how we’d laugh and laugh when she did that. All the simple fun she made for us kids. All the things she did that made us laugh. All the love she poured out onto each of us. I tell them all of that. How she filled us up with the good parts of life. My childhood memories free-wheel around on the open road.

We each have our own way of expressing our excitement as we approach the small country town where Sister asked us to meet her. She doesn’t live there. She lives in the high country, thirty-five miles away in a remote trail-riding camp along the Ghost River. A speck of a place according to Google Maps. She will be our guide.