Bend, Oregon: the name is as plain and brown as the dust it sits in. My little legs hang out from the car seat and I press my nose against the window, gazing without emotion at the grayish-green farmhouse looming in the shadows of dusk by the gravel roadside where my family is parked. The hood of the old brown Corolla is up and my father is under it, tinkering. My mother and older brother sit in silence, as the desert sun lowers behind dusty clouds. I ask my mother where we are; I’ve probably asked many times during the day, but I do not understand where we are going. Bend, she tells me. The word is medium brown and small and looks exactly like the Corolla. I shift in my car seat and the memory fades.
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My family is on vacation, I come to vaguely understand after we have sputtered into a motel parking lot and entered our yellow-shag carpeted room. What this means, and why we are here, in this desolate town, I do not know. We began the day driving in a completely different direction, stopping at a grand waterfall where my father and brother went hiking along the trail up to the big bridge. My mother waited with me below, as I tugged and pulled at her hand, crying, wanting to follow after them. We continued on to a large, snow covered mountain, eating sandwiches in the car while snow swirled around. We toured the museum in the lodge; I stared at the scale model of the perfectly pointed mountain in the glass case, mesmerized. I must have fallen asleep for the rest of the drive, coming back into consciousness to the sputtering of our dying car, stranded along the roadside.
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I tug on my mother’s hand. I pull and pull, and my father and brother walk further and further ahead up the trail to the top of the extinct volcano. I’m being left behind, again. My mother never wants to do anything. Wait, I plead. Wait for me. My mother sets me down on a concrete wall at the bottom of the black, ashen mountainside and gives me a sandwich. I hate sandwiches; the bread crust drives me to tears. The sky is vast; I’ve never seen such a big sky, with no trees to block any part of it. Nothing on the ground but rocks and dirt. Jagged mountains sit on the horizon, three of them in a row, basking in the sun. My mother is tired, serious, but I think nothing of it.
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The reindeer are everywhere, their antlers intertwining as they gather at the fence. They breathe heavily, their monstrous nostrils sniffing my brother’s coat pockets. My father lifts me up high, so I can greet them at eye-level. They roar, and they smell bad. I struggle in my father’s grip. My mother is halfway up the dirt road, standing away from the stench and holding her stomach.
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We are on another gravel road, the only roads I have seen since we arrived here. The red rocks tower over the trees, touching the overcast sky. My father and brother are far in the distance, walking down the gravel toward the massive crags. I whine, but don’t say much. I knew they would leave me behind again. My mother lifts me onto the hood of the Corolla and gives me a sandwich, without the crusts. The cheddar cheese is sharp and wonderful in contrast with the awful, squishy white bread. My mother breathes deeply the clean cool air, gazing at the rocks with her hands in her coat pockets.
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We drive and drive, out of the desert, through trees and mountains, and then we are home. I sit on the living room floor, among all my toys, joyful to have them back.
The Sonrisa Project 