Osler's Razor

I grew up, both in Detroit and Grosse Pointe, within five miles of I-94. It is a gritty strand that flows between abandoned churches and abandoned auto plants, a continuous tableau of exposed rebar and broken concrete. Even now that road is full of broken old sedans that thump on the potholes and rattle so loudly you can hear them in the next lane through the trash bag taped over that old sedan's window. The interstate (like too many other things) was held a safe distance away from Grosse Pointe, four blocks from our neighborhoods, but was still our lifeline to the rest of the world. Every trip started with that merge, that short entry ramp, onto I-94. My dad would hit the gas, the car would jump, and we would slip into that flow with people headed to Flint and Toledo and Lansing and places even less fortunate than those.

Now I live the same distance from I-35, which runs from Laredo to Duluth. Unlike Grosse Pointe, the interstate runs straight up the gut of Waco; Baylor dorms are yards away from trucks rumbling by. I-35 is always crowded, always, and is the Mississippi River of Texas, full of people and goods and immigrants and life. And, sometimes, death-- the river is still untamed, and can kill you if you aren't careful. In Austin, it splits into two levels, and I always take the upper deck so that I can see everything, look right into the football stadium and see the students at UT. In the summer, I have driven that road nearly its full length starting in Duluth and heading south as I start out in a sweatshirt and end up in shorts two days later, home again in Waco.

These are the two rivers I have known best.

Recently, I found myself at the place where they meet. I was on I-35, and the GPS said "turn left on I-94," and it struck me that this was the meeting point of my life. For a moment, the two roads ran together and I saw tall buildings and a place I didn't know, even as I was surrounded by the grit and steel of my familiars. These are my rivers, and I am still a drop, flowing, flowing, changing lanes and speeding up.