I suppose it had seat belts, the back of our Chevy Impala, but I don’t remember ever using them. I liked sitting on the floor and spreading out my school papers on the big bench seating. Maybe it was because I had heard my mother say it so many times — at her work desk, after getting the mail, at the kitchen table — when I asked what she was doing, it was always “paperwork.” I thought it sounded so important, so grown-up. That’s why on a Sunday afternoon, going to my grandparent’s farm, long after all of my homework was done and double checked, I brought it with on the drive. The road rumbled beneath me, as I arranged the times tables and book reports on the maroon pleather seat, waiting for my mother to ask me, knowing she would, “What are you doing?” — so joyfully, so insync, so proud to be just like her, I would answer, “paperwork.” 

Long after going nearly paperless, in front of our computers, ipads and smartphones, the feeling remained. The years turned it into more of a private joke, but still a connection, and our answer to almost every “what are you doing?” was paperwork. 

It still makes me smile, even as I ask the question silently in my head, I ride the slight rumble of a gravel road beneath me, the wave of papers flying about my head, and I can feel the long-armed reach of my mother’s hand slide between the two front seats and touch my shoulder, and all is at it should be — I am loved. 

Unbelted at my desk, my paperwork done for the morning, I joyfully step into the day.