Memory 2 Week 8

A few years into college, I stopped going home as much. At 19, 20, I became too engrossed in a campus ministry retreat than hearing my mother cry herself to sleep at night, even when she thought we wouldn't know. I don't remember the exact day, or month, that I stopped wanting to go home, but I just remember being out to dinner one night with my sister-- we enjoyed sushi with coworkers on certain weekends--and she looked at me, asked if I wanted to ride around for a little while.

My sister's not one for talking. When we'd go out to dinner with my father and stepmother, she left the talking to me, as I could talk to anyone, anything. She's better at confrontation. At brooding. At knowing exactly what to say at the exact moment to say it. So, in order to not bother her with the same funny stories about whatever class I was taking at the time, ones I had told her three times that night out of awkwardness, I offered, "we should go buy a CD from Target. One that we've never heard of."

Ten minutes later, after two right turns and a stop light that took too long, we parked next to some banged up Chevy on the Entertainment side of Target. Somewhere between Childish Gambino and Eminem sat this band I had never heard of: Depeche Mode. The English major in me stopped working as I asked "who's Di-petch-eee Mode?" My sister stared at me, the laughed so hard I almost saw pee dribble down her jeans.

We debated between fits about that, AWOL Nation, and some now famous country singer, and Depeche Mode won. While we argued about who was going to buy it (as that person got to keep the CD later), my mother called, wondering when we were going to be home. I told her not for a while, we were still out, and she sniffled quickly and said okay. Hung up.

We ended up skipping every track but one, a song called "The Child Inside," and drove along 92 watching Taco Loco turn off its lights, turning down the road that led to the house our father was trying to sell so he could move closer to the office he stopped working at four months before.
It was all so coffee table. Something you flip through when you're bored or avoiding conversation.