Early morning fog wafts across the highway. Dawn, like a fan dancer in nature’s club, waves her veils across the land. One more trip to PA to consult with my siblings about our mother’s delusional dementia. Earlier in the summer, she was still mostly Irma. Now when I arrive, she is mostly gone, living inside the weird, funny, sad, unbelievable story her brain is crocheting over her memories. These drives are not fun.

Along the way, I plug in my iPod and crank up my list of favorite tunes. Bob Seger rocks about night moves. Hall and Oates describe the method of modern love. The Dixie Chicks remind me how much I miss their honest lyrics. Then Stevie Nicks slips in beside me, observing the passing of time, asking, “Can I handle the seasons of my life?” Landslide. Right.

The days shift. Each Facebook post brings a smile or a new tremor. The road may go on forever, as Tolkien wrote, but we do not. Our stories have an ending, and the journey there is not always a pleasant one. How to handle the changes that arrive, book-ended by solstice nights, shelved between the C of compassion and the R of responsibility? Decisions loom like headlights, oncoming, shrouded, daring me to stay the course or veer into disaster.

Lifting my gaze to the rear view mirror, I notice my eyes, intent and anxious, checking for impatient drivers. Amid the press of appointments. the phone calls to doctors and lawyers, the weighing of my mother’s express desire to remain where she is against the need to ensure her safety, I find myself standing on Fleetwood Mac’s mountain, staring into the reflection of my own life and wondering how to do this thing called adulting.

The iPod shuffles through the albums. The Eagles fill the car with a new tune. “Do something,” they croon, and I put my foot on the gas and motor on. August is winding down, summer on the wane. Autumn beckons with leafy fingers, stained now with the colors of her time. I drive on, unable to turn back, sailing, along with Stevie, into the next ocean’s wave.