Glitter Oxfords at Night

What makes a trip the ‘best’, or a favorite? I haven’t done a lot of traveling in my life (well, okay, when I was little I did a decent amount, but only if making the same trip several times counts.) I love each trip that I have gone on, because each one was with people that I love, and each one brings back so many memories. As I sat down to write this, I mentally flipped back through my memories of trips past - the summers that I spent in Vermont when I was younger, my first trip down South when I was 18 months old, the trips with my grandparents in their camper, and the one time that we ended up in a hotel because the camper broke down and derailed our entire trip. I kept going over each of these trips in my mind, trying to figure out why I wanted to write about this one but not about that one, and thinking about which ones my mind kept going back to. Finally I settled on my most recent trip, which was bittersweet in many ways, but an incredible experience that I needed more than anything. This year has been a hard one for me. My grandfather was diagnosed with cancer last year, and I was lucky to be around for his final months - lucky in the sense that I was able to be here with him, unlike my cousin who lives in Germany, unlucky in that I was watching someone I loved become someone that I barely knew. It was hard, especially with everything else that was going on, but there was one thing that helped, made me feel okay, even if it was only for an hour each week. And that was glee. (I know, this seems like a lot of back story, but it is related.) One night in February I decided that I was going to buy tickets to go and see the Glee Live tour, as a birthday present for my mother and as a reason to have hope. And it worked, because even though the show wasn’t for months, each time I remembered the tickets it was something that I had to look forward too, a light at the end of the tunnel. And finally the day came. We rented a car, because we decided to get mine worked on at the same time, and left Vermont around noon. The concert was in East Rutherford NJ, which didn’t seem so bad because when I head down that way normally I am going to Trenton. Other than getting stuck in a traffic jam and panicking a little bit, the drive down was uneventful. We found the hotel, changed, and walked over to the arena. When we got there, there was this palpable energy in the air. Everyone was just so excited to be there. There were tons of people that were dressed up, holding signs, trying to make themselves be known. Our seats were in the nosebleed section, but when the concert finally started it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because watching the show wasn’t as important as being there. It didn’t matter that I annoyed people around me, or that I lost my voice because I was screaming so hard. It was one of the first times in a long time that I was truly happy. Sure, I knew that I would be going home the next day, back to all of the problems that being me entailed. The drive home was going to start to early and be to long. But that night, as I danced back to the hotel (even though I can’t dance), after walking through a parking lot filled with people, including someone with oxford shoes that glittered against the dark pavement, I felt good. Sometimes it isn’t the trip itself, or even the destination that makes a trip great. It’s how the trip makes you feel inside.