route 73

I think I had a near-perfect moment this morning, in Jersey of all places. For years South Jersey has haunted me. It's the place I came from, it's the place my family lives, it's the heart and home of all that I am. And somehow still it fills me with a quiet, aching loneliness, a deficiency I'll never overcome, despite that I've learned how to live with it and that I've stopped believing it defines and determines my goodness or badness. It's a sadness, that's all, and the strip-mall highways and cookie cutter housing developments of South Jersey paint what I know it to look like.

Then this morning, after a beautiful date last night and a now traditional Sunday morning breakfast with Pop, I sat at a gas station fueling up. I never stop in Jersey. I hate waiting for an attendant and I hate being waited on. But because I didn't know where to go for gas in Northern Liberties, where the car was due back, I stopped at an Exxon on Route 73 just beyond the Cracker Barrel. And a leathery old man, probably only middle-aged but weathered far beyond, pumped my gas smiling at me, and washed off my windshield while he quietly sang a song in his native tongue, the same refrain over and over again, with a simple and wandering melody. And the man and the song and the morning sun washed over me and I imagine now that if I could feel that same peace someday before I die, I'll believe a heaven exists.