Wheel in the Sky: Where the Road Meets the Stars

Some people exist in snapshots. Margaret was one of them.

The hum of tires on the road, the shimmer of heat rising off the pavement. Journey playing loud enough to shake the windows. The lake is still miles ahead, but we can already feel it—the promise of cool water, the weight of the sun, the way summer in a small Texas town never feels like it’s moving too fast, until one day you realize it’s already gone.

Margaret is driving. One hand resting on the wheel, the other tapping the door in rhythm with the music. Sunglasses on top of her head, golden hair catching the wind. She sings with her whole body, like the song is pulling her forward, like she was meant to be part of it. My mom is beside her, harmonizing without effort, their voices blending into something so familiar, so natural, it’s impossible to imagine one without the other.

“Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’…”

I am in the middle seat, the same place I always am. Small, safe, pressed between them, feeling the music as much as hearing it. The kind of moment you don’t realize is golden until time makes it untouchable.

Behind us, in the back of the truck, Bobby, Tommy, Billy, and Trey lean against the metal, their arms stretched out, the wind rushing past them like they could catch it in their hands. Laughing, yelling things that don’t need to be heard, because the music is already carrying everything that matters. Their hair whips in every direction, their voices swallowed by the road, but they don’t care. None of us do.

The air is thick with heat, dust, and lake water in the distance. The sun hangs high above us, casting everything in that endless, golden light. I don’t remember what Margaret smelled like, but I remember what it felt like to be around her.

She was effortlessly cool, but not in the way people try to be—in the way people just are. Beautiful, kind, full of light. She loved animals. She loved music. She loved capturing the moments that mattered, always behind the camera, making sure no one forgot how it felt to be here, right now, in the thick of it. But she wasn’t just recording life—she was living it.

Some songs aren’t just songs. They are people, they are places, they are moments frozen in time. They are the heat of the road beneath you, the sound of wind rushing past an open window, the way your mother and her best friend sing like they are part of the band, like they belong to the music just as much as it belongs to them.

Some songs aren’t just songs. They are time machines.

And when Journey plays, I am back here again.

The truck. The music. The heat of the summer stretching out before us, endless, until one day it wasn’t.

Some people don’t fade, they just move farther away—like stars, still burning, still there, even when you can’t see them.

“I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow…”

I didn’t know either. But I didn’t care.

Because back then, it always felt like summer would last forever.

And in some ways, it still does.

The wheel in the sky keeps turning spinning somewhere ahead, where the road meets the sky.

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