D

riving 
back 
from 

the 
beach, 
from 

my cousins’ house, 

from soccer games and swim 
meets, I always knew where 
I was. The familiarity of 
the 
Pennsylvania 
woods, 

the highway signs of 95 
and Route 1, and the Eagles 
stickers on the backs of cars 
reminded me I was never 
far from home. I had always 
considered Philadelphia and 
the East Coast my home, 
and although I still love it, 
the concept of “home” has 
changed significantly for me 
over the years.

I was moving into college 

when I took my first road 
trip by myself (well, with my 
dog in the passenger seat), 
and I knew I would not be 
returning home from this 
trip. Michigan was a foreign 
place with new interstates 
and different woods. I was 
driving from Philadelphia to 
Ann Arbor –– a 10-hour trip 
of mountain ranges, farmland 
and tunnels. 

I remember driving past 

Toledo when it became dark. 
My mom and my sister were 
in another car, which was 
out of sight at this point, but 
I knew we would be in Ann 
Arbor within the next hour. 
Even with that in mind, it 
was dark and I was lost. I hit 
Detroit traffic, and I realized 
how far away I was from 
Wawa and Phillies fans. I was 
alone, distant from everyone 

and everything I knew.

To calm my anxiety, I 

remembered the rubies and 
diamonds.

The story goes as follows: 

When my mother was young, 
the long drives home from the 
Jersey Shore to Montclair, a 
town in northern Jersey, sent 
her into a daze of boredom. 
My grandpa would watch the 
cars move with him and past 
him on New Jersey Route 4.

Trying to pass time, she 

asked my grandpa how to 
entertain herself to distract 
her from the swallowing 
darkness of night and bright 
lights of the surrounding 
cars. He hold her, “Imagine 
the lights in front of us are a 

string of rubies, and the lights 
coming toward us are a string 
of diamonds.”

I like to think that my 

mother pictured the highway 
full of zooming, psychedelic 
gems. But maybe she rolled 
her eyes and drifted off to 
sleep.

The story of the car gems 

was carried from my grandpa 
to my mom to me. Maybe it 
was just something to pass 
time, but to me it’s so much 
more. It’s a mechanism for 
grounding, 
appreciating 

and 
acknowledging 
my 

surroundings.

Although my first trip to 

college consisted of driving 
through unfamiliar places 

just to arrive at another 
unfamiliar 
place, 
not 

everything about this moment 
made me feel alienated.

The string of rubies and 

diamonds 
in 
the 
Detroit 

traffic was the same string 
of gems I’d seen many times 
before. That same string 
reminds me that this is still 
life, just in a new place; no 
matter where I drive, there 
will always be the same cars, 
the same traffic, the same 
routines.

The concept came to me 

again the first time I flew 
alone on an airplane. Once 
I took off, I looked below 
at highways of rubies and 
diamonds, 
and 
I 
looked 

into the sky, where blinking 
airplane lights became rubies 
and distant stars became 
diamonds. I wasn’t in one 
single place, on the ground or 
in a home. I was alone in the 
vacant space of the clouds, 
building a place for myself 
because that was all I really 
had and all I really have.

I don’t believe I have a place 

to consider home. My family 
lives in three different states, 
and a college apartment 
doesn’t really suffice. As a 
kid, I believed I could only go 
back to one place: that home 
on Fairhill Drive. By moving 
to Michigan, I distanced 
myself 
from 
everything 

I knew and everything I 
thought was true. And with 
that, I was able to — I’ve had 
to — create a type of “home” 
in myself wherever I go. 

My grandpa’s message of 

rubies and diamonds is a 
way to ground myself in my 
familial roots, creating the 
feeling that I have family and 
familiarity no matter where 
I am. It’s something to hold 
on to.

During my adventure in 

Detroit, I remember looking 
over to my dog, Wesley, curled 
up on the passenger seat. The 
red car lights shined through 
the car windshield and onto 
his black fur. I was hundreds 
of miles from Philadelphia, 
but maybe I wasn’t as far as 
I thought.

2B

Managaing Editor:

Lara Moehlman

Deputy Editors:

Yoshiko Iwai

Brian Kuang 

Photo Editor:

Claire Abdo

Editor in Chief:

Emma Kinery 

Managing Editor:

Rebecca Lerner

Copy Editors:

Danielle Jackson

Taylor Grandinetti

Wednesday, February 8, 2017 // The Statement 

Little Things: Rubies and Diamonds

BY ERIKA SHEVCHEK, DAILY ARTS WRITER

ILLUSTRATION BY KATIE SPAK

statement

THE MICHIGAN DAILY | FEBRUARY 8, 2017