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When I was sixteen, I ran away from home. It was winter; it was snowing. I was incredibly angry with my parents for some reason, and maybe they were angry with me too, although I don't think so. I have absolutely no idea why I was angry, not so much as a shred. And the conflict could not have been a significant one, in the grand scheme of things. I was so far from a rebellious teenager that when I try to think of bad things I did, I almost can't. I guess a couple of times I drove into Cambridge when I wasn't supposed to? During the day? Seriously. I was a goody-goody.

But still, I was angry. I remember this, and because it was snowing, and I didn't have my driver's license yet, I ran away, or rather walked away: up our driveway and down the street in the general direction of my best friend Caroline's house. It would have taken me hours to get there, although only a fifteen minute drive. The roads between our homes are narrow and winding, and it was snowing pretty hard. I don't think I had anything with me, no snacks or supplies, and I knew my parents would know where I was going. But the reality is that none of us--me, my parents--could have thought I was going very far at all. It was a symbolic running away, and I got exactly what I deserved for the hollow gesture.

About five minutes into my journey, headlights shone through the night from behind me. A car approached, then slowed, then slowed still more so it was driving beside me, as I walked, about 2 miles per hour, I would guess, from my usual pace. It was my father, "Joel," as my friends called him even then--when he wasn't around, of course--the most overprotective parent in the history of suburban parents. This was a man who had literally followed me to school as soon as I was able to walk. The school was about a tenth of a mile from our house, and I walked with two friends, boys no less, but still he followed, hiding behind trees, undetected, unbeknownst to me. The window nearest me rolled down; I kept walking, snow falling softly on my shoulders, my eyelashes. My feet were cold already. In my inchoate anger, I had not had time to don boots, although again, I can't remember the details, what I was wearing on my feet.

It was a beautiful night, I do remember that. And so much of the town I grew up in is beautiful, still. Its relatively recent rural past is still in evidence in many pockets, especially near my parents' house--where there is no neighborhood to speak of, but acres and acres of woods, ponds and streams. It is possible, on a snowy evening right after dinnertime, to drive a car 2 miles an hour down the street for quite some time with no other cars approaching in either direction. It is possible to pass only 4 or 5 houses during this time, while keeping one's eyes on the paths of light made by headlights on the unplowed street, while ignoring one's equally determined father, who--with the benefit of heated seats--was less likely to be the first to give in.

I gave. Before I'd gone even halfway to my grandmother's house, two miles away, the car stopped, and I got in. We rode in stony silence back home, where I probably took a bath and sulked for a while, called Caroline and told her I wasn't coming. Or maybe she hadn't known. This was long before the days of the cell phone. House phones had cords. I'm not sure why I started writing this except that moments of the evening--although not the arc of it--are so vivid to me still: the blackness of the night, the headlights on the snow, my damp, cold feet, the window rolling down, the solitude and isolation both before and after my father pulled up in the car.

I think in some way it is a snapshot of my childhood in a small town: how easy it was to be alone, how the expanses of space in every direction helped form me, my idea of the world, how I didn't really realize there were other ways, other places, in which to live.