The next day, we left from Columbia, Missouri and got through St. Louis, after a stop for Cameron to clean up some cat poop in her car. Then, coming out of the gas station where we had stopped, I took a wrong turn that took us to the Departure drop-off lanes at Lambert Airport. After getting back on the highway, we were headed for southern Illinois. I noticed some neat farm compounds, often white and highlighted with red, nestled among the crops and a stand of forest, reminding me of Margaret Fuller’s hope that settlers could live in harmony with nature. But after these glimpses of farm homes, much of the rest of the drive to Kennesaw, Georgia was down freeways lined with trees, preventing a view of the life of the land and its people except for rare breaks in the trees. While the green lushness was refreshing, it was also monotonous, causing Cameron and me to feel hypnotized by the road. Did we fall asleep at the wheel? We stopped at a roadside rest area near Paducah, Kentucky, and walked around a bit, Lucy got to stretch her legs some. We crossed the Ohio River to get to Paducah; I was surprised at how wide it is, never having seen it before. I thought of Eliza running on the ice floes across the Ohio to freedom in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While that is a dangerous enough feat, I had always imagined a much more manageable width to cross than it was at our easy bridge crossing.
Finally made it Brad’s house in Kennesaw after another 10-12 hour driving day. Exhausted.
I tried to keep family and friends posted about our trip by posting pictures on Facebook and emailing some pictures to the family. My brother James replied by reminding me of a book I published, Women, America, and Movement: Narratives of Relocation, with the University of Missouri Press in Columbia, where we had spent the night. While I was focused on thinking about what my view from the windshield told me about the landscape, about the pieces of America we whizzed through, I should have also thought about the story of women and relocation that Cameron and I were re-enacting. Moves across the country are part of our families’ stories as my parents and Cameron’s grandparents on both sides, moved to follow new dreams. That is just what she is doing, has done in her several moves across the country to go to graduate school and then to find a location for her dream, her boutique. It is fitting that this was a mother-daughter journey of relocation, a woman’s story of daring and dreams, and long days on the road. In many ways her dream is also my dream, the chance to really do what you want to do, to really have a chance to follow your dream.