My Grandad was a trucker. He traveled the country in his semi, always bringing home trinkets for my brothers and I. I kept every last one of them.
They used to be displayed on top of my dresser, but after he passed away they just became a constant reminder of his absence. Now I keep them in a box in my closet. Every once and awhile I take it out, though.
Growing up, we didn’t have much money. Hell, we still don’t have much money. Still, Grandad encouraged me to travel. He walked with me to the library to check out guidebooks. He’d pull the impossibly massive, dusty old encyclopedia off the top shelf and teach me about the mountains and the sea.
I caught the wanderlust bug right away. The rest of our family was content to live and die in our faded hometown, but Grandad and I, we wanted more. The road called us. I was always jealous because he could answer it, and I was stuck in school.
He gave me his compass a couple weeks before he died. I guess he felt it coming. Sure came as a shock to the rest of us.
“I’ve had my turn,” he said. “Now it’s yours.”
I spent the next three years dreaming about what would happen once I graduated, how it would feel, the places I could go, things I could see…
Now that I’m here, it’s more terrifying than dreamy. The possibilities stretch before me, as endless and dangerous and wonderful as the sea. I fetch my big jar of coins and crumpled bill from the top shelf. It’s labeled “adventures,” in Grandad’s untidy scrawl. He gave it to me for Christmas when I was eleven. Every penny I find on the ground, every dollar I manage to scrounge up, every nickel, every dime…. it all goes in my jar.
I’m eighteen now and there are two hundred and fifty dollars. I dump it all out on my unmade bed and count it one last time.
A deep breath of relief escapes my lungs. Finally.