Sugar and lights

The powder fell onto my lap covering my jeans with snowy soon to be sticky sweetness. The beignet made it into my mouth though, hunks of greasy white fried dough shredded into bite sized bombs of wheat and oil.
At two o clock in the morning in mid-December the taillights of passing cars became Christmas lights, the tall pines on the side of the road X-mas trees. I turned the music down a little to let J sleep. Songs about chestnuts and snowmen filtered through the speakers and kept me company through the Alabama night as I fought to keep my eyes open and focused on the road ahead.
Hence the devouring of the cold slightly tough and far too powdery beignet from New Orleans. Cafe du Monde of course. We left the Big Easy at 11pm in our typical going on a journey fashion. Memories of throwing off docklines in midnight snowstorms and raising sails at sunrise and racing home on the New Englandy 95 in a battered station wagon for a surprise Christmas visit flashed through my head.
Late at night on passages- be it on land or at sea- the best line of defense against sleepiness is keeping my mouth moving either with talk or peanut m&ms.
J was asleep.
My baggie of m&ms woefully empty.
Gum can be a good diversion but with the quick loss of flavor and jaw fatigue, well, even my habit of chewing three pieces at once couldn't cut it.
Brushing the residue off my coat, my lips, my hands stuck to the steering wheel as I changed lanes, a few miles closer to New York, to friends and family and holidays and steaming cups of hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows. The sugar high lasts for a few minutes until the wheat low kicks in, but the overall result is a few more minutes of me coherent at the wheel, a few more minutes J gets to sleep, a few more minutes I get to think about this past year that has raced by, twisting and turning and swerving with no brakes or indicators.
I crumple the bag of crispy crumbs and clumped powdered sugar, throwing it onto the backseat. I reach over to tap J's hand.
"Wanna drive?"
I pull over, brush the seat clean, jump into the passenger side. I fall asleep to Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and the sound of J popping open a bottle of Mountain Dew. As images flash past my eyelids and the stickiness of my fingers ceases to bother, I trust I will get to NYC in one piece just as I have arrived to islands and wooded destinations in years past.
Too bad there are no more beignets to keep J company.
I'm sure he (yawn) understands.