Seventy-Seven

I feel blessed that I only live six hours from home. Yes, six hours is a long time to be in a car, but it's not eight hours. It's not fourteen hours. It's not a $250 plane ticket. It's just a long morning in the car. I spend more time every day in my office, sitting at my desk.

Katie and I have made that drive back home several times now. In fact, I recently counted how many trips I've made between Ohio and North Carolina in the last two years. Final tally? Sixteen.

Still, every time we make the drive, we look forward to it. The stretch between here and there is far from tedious. Sure, the two-hour stretch from Durham to the North Carolina-Virginia border is a pass through modern-day America -- complete with billboards, factories, and Hooters -- but about four miles south of Virginia, you hit the north-south vein of America that is Interstate 77.

Interstate 77 is just more than 600 miles of highway that stretches from Columbia, South Carolina, to Cleveland, Ohio. We pick it up near Mount Airy, North Carolina, and take it to Ravenswood, West Virginia -- a full 223 miles -- before splitting off on 33 toward home. It's two-thirds of our drive home, and I couldn't be more thankful.

I think Interstate 77, or at least the length that we drive, is fascinating. Honest to goodness, I think it's beautiful. Immediately after crossing the Virginia state border, the rolling pavement designated into four lanes leads you high into the Appalachian mountains, which don't release you until you're several miles north of Charleston, West Virginia. Even then, you're roller coastering along the foothills. That whole stretch, including about an hour's worth in Virginia and two and a half hours' worth in West Virginia, offers mountain panoramas, rolling forests, myriad colors, and a pass through one of the more under-appreciated cultures in America.

I've never thought much of West Virginia -- biased, I know -- but I'll hand it to them: they've got one gorgeous state to traverse.

And so we look forward to our drive north.

And we look forward to what's on the other end of the drive. Home.

Trip number sixteen carried us home last week. But it was bittersweet. The stop home was only brief, as it was more of a pitstop on the path toward the place Katie once called home, a full three hours beyond the place she's come to know as home. Katie's grandmother had passed away. She was ninety-three. She outlived nine siblings, four children, and her husband. We gathered to say goodbye.

I never really knew Katie's grandmother. A stroke two years ago had left her speech permanently impaired, and my only encounters with her were ones in which she struggled to get us to understand what it was she was trying to say -- and what, in her head, made perfect sense. But even in the scrambled words that came from her mouth, she was a charming woman who'd lost plenty in life and yet hadn't once pointed a finger at the world.

She'd meant a lot to Katie.

And so the trip home last week was one that included tears, exhaustion, and barely a moment to rest. But it was still a trip home, one that reminded us of everything we were blessed to have not so long ago. And everything we're blessed to have just a six-hour drive away. And everyone who has blessed us along the road that has put us here.

The trip really is a beautiful thing. And so we look forward to it.