“It’s all in your head.”
I can hear my father saying it. My mother didn’t correct him even though she suffered the same ailment as I did. Often. I don’t remember him saying it to her but he said it to me. Often.
“It’s all in your head.” He said whenever I got car sick.
On a city bus from Bloomfield to Newark in New Jersey, sometime during the last years of big department stores clustered around Market and Halsey Streets, my mother and I set out to have a shopping day. I was accompanying my mother because I was the oldest girl in our family; however, I was not the best shopping companion. As a short, fat, rather plain child who leaned towards play pants, never dresses, I didn’t enjoy department stores. My younger sister would have been the better choice.
Still, Mom and I boarded the number 128 bus bound for Newark and chatted amiably as we passed Bloomfield Center and headed down Bloomfield Avenue. The 128 was not a local bus and did not stop at every corner, but there were still plenty of stops. The bus slowed down, pulled over to the right to the curb, stopped, then started again, pulled out into traffic and took on as much speed as city streets allowed. I was always queasy on buses but I was too young to take one alone and the family usually travelled by car.
Chasing Joy 