memory lane

My brother and I are notoriously opposite: he's basketball and golf, voting for Republicans, beige, mushy food, skin that tans. So yesterday, when I came up with birthday gifts for him that are things that I like? Seemed like a bit of a risk.

But then I remembered a trip that we took the summer after I graduated from high school; he would have been fifteen. We did not go alone--that never would have happened--but with our grandma and our aunt, a woman with no concept or appreciation for history. That's important, because we went to Virginia--Williamsburg and Charlottesville, for Monticello--and Washington, D.C. We drove all the way from Illinois, and we must have been gone about a thousand years. We got to do a lot of things, walked through the White House and the whole bit, walked everywhere, to the point my teenaged self thought I would surely die. Only had an hour for the Smithsonian, though, by our aunt's decree, because what in the world could be there? It was about then we realized we were trapped. About then we realized we couldn't take it. About then we pooled our remaining dollars to see if we could possibly Greyhound it home.

So when I was roaming through Borders, hoping to swiftly knock out this birthday present--in one hand a favorite CD of mine we'd previously discussed-it seemed kind of appropriate, at least maybe justifiable in a memory lane kind of a way, to add an audiobook (he travels for work) that includes a chapter (I've read it; it's funny) of the author and a sister retracing the Trail of Tears.