My mama took to the highway early in January, wishing she could fly away, wishing she knew where she came from and where she was going, lonesome, wishing she could huddle in her beat-up car and hide. Dreamlike winter fog and a trashy car thrashing along and numbness. She was staring out by the road, running like a lost little river to her home in the sea. Lullabies spoke to the heart of her. My mama in January was drifting and sleeping and sleepless, awake and alive and dead, all at once. My mama in January was misty with unshed tears, like a snowman in warm rain. My mama in January lay awake and wondered where the years had gone. Years curled past her, creeping around her, unaware, like cats brushing her legs, begging memories back into the room. She wondered where her hopes and chances had gone. They had all passed under a tunnel. They had all gone under January’s white, silent tunnel. She had learned there was one tunnel she had to face all alone.