How A Road Trip Saved My Marriage

Kiran Manral recalls the long drives that helped her and her husband reclaim love.

The night would be velvet dark when we left, the morning star yet to peep out from beyond the distant Eastern hills. We’d wake with the alarm dinning consciousness into our sleep-addled brains, have a quick shower, grab our duffel bags packed with a week’s worth of clothes and tiptoe out, trying not to disturb the household.

Down in the parking lot, our trusted green Zen awaited us, the second car we owned, a tin can of hope and anticipation. It would be home and transport for the next couple of weeks or so while we drove out to wherever the road took us. Those were days when our hearts were young and stout, unstriated by the cares of what the years would soon throw at us. The most careworn we ever were back then was while nursing a well-earned hangover. We were in our twenties, the spouse and I. Middle age was a lifetime, a cut uterus and a slowing metabolism away.