I wasn’t sure that I could go back there — the last place that I saw my mother. I hadn’t even been on the road since she had passed. But I had made a promise to Phyllis Norton. Phyllis Norton, the anchor of our childhood home on Van Dyke Road. The road I write so often of now. But the same road I couldn’t revisit for more than 20 years. Because gravel has a memory, I suppose. And it releases into you when you travel upon it. Pebble by pebble. But what took me twenty years to learn the first time – that the heart has a filter – only took two, and I found myself on the way to Windmill Ponds to visit Phyllis Norton. 

It was only moments in…when her smile was too big to even turn up at the corners, that I forgot the place, and I only remembered her. It could have easily been Van Dyke Road. And I could have been five. Kneeling next to her with a skinned knee. Hovering secure between these mothers of our Van Dyke Road. These women that kept me safe, whether on top of the hill or at the bottom. 

The roads that we travel are not always easy. But always worth the journey. The heart knows this. My heart knows this. Disregarding pebbles. Knocking them off one by one. Eager to get to the joy. To get to the love. Always more willing, and ever telling my feet to go, to get there. 

Nortons always had the good band-aids. The pink baby aspirin that tasted like candy. A smiling Phyllis to distribute both. Any hurt was always diminished, overtaken by safety, surpassed by joy. Kneeling beside her yesterday, it was the same. 

A road by any other name…