Picture this:

[Please excuse the grammar.]

A bright blue Toyota Rav4 going the speed limit down a Connecticut highway, the last remnants of the sun can barely been seen as a pinkish haze on the horizon, though obscured by trees. The sky directly above the car is almost the deepest shade of blue it becomes over the course of the night. Only the brightest stars a visible, and there is a sliver of a crescent moon.

A black, plastic rosary is dangling from the rear-view mirror. Junk and little knick-knack toys are sprawled about the car haphazardly. Opera is blasting from the stereo, to accomodate the almost deaf passengers.

The driver, my mother, humming along in the front seat. Her short, salt-and-pepper grey hair is pulled into a half ponytail and a bright green dress with three dancing kokopellis on the front.

In the passenger seat sits an old Italian woman, who is almost completely deaf, and if her pride allowed, should be walking with a cane. Her usual sunglasses remain glued to her face, despite the dark. She wears a red bandana tied around her head like a pirate - or a hippie, a dark flower-patterned nightgown with a black vest, brown stockings, tan leather shoes, and a bright red patent-pleather knock-off chanel purse, which I am sure she has no idea is a knock-off. Not to mention the many pieces of jewellery, all of which is real gold, including a $1 brown cameo she found at a tag sale and had set in gold, with a $300 gold chain. [That was actually ingenious.] She is gently humming and dancing, almost unnoticably, to the music that she can't hear, simply in response to my mother, who is doing the same in the seat next to her. Though she often speaks of her dislike for "i zingari," in my opinion, she resembles the stereotypical gypsy.

In the seat behind the driver rests an equally old Italian man, dozing. He wears a striped polo shirt and pants that he has no doubt owned since the 1950's and his wife's white rain jacket for warmth.

I, in the seat next to him, am attempting to read a book about vampires, though the falling daylight makes it almost impossible, wearing my boy's polo and old, ripped jeans.

[End scene.]


Sometimes I wish I had a camera always with me. It made me laugh when I thought about other people seeing this cast of characters [that is my family] somehow functioning together.