Chapter One

For about thirty years I thought that I would write a book about the trip I took this summer. I didn’t think about it every day, but it was settled in my mind. An eventual fact. I pictured making the trip in the fall, and (I don’t know why) I thought I would drive alone. Slowly. Stopping whenever I wanted to. In my daydreams, I traveled in a silver Airstream, and for a really obnoxious couple of weeks or so I thought I wanted to find a typewriter from 1914 to bring along. At the end of every day, I’d park the trailer, crack open a beer, look at the old and new photos, and type up my story. The Airstream windows would be open as the southwestern sun went down, the breeze billowing the curtains as I worked at the typewriter, the paper coming out the top tinted by the fading orange light.

I know.

Look. I’m sure you have some sappy daydreams, too. I’m just being honest.

2014 was always so far away until it wasn’t. In 2012 I met a documentary filmmaker. Wouldn’t it be incredible, I thought, to make the trip with her? Or, maybe I could invite this really talented photographer I know, and also this blogger who does all these great interviews? We could travel together and each do our own project – me on the specific trip my great-grandparents took, and them from a broader, 100 Years Later perspective. Last year, a published author I know encouraged me to get a book proposal together for him to share with his agent and I started it and restarted it and picked up back up again so many times. A literary agent pressed her card into my hand and asked me to call. And I meant to. I honestly thought I would.

When I couldn’t get anywhere with an outline and book proposal I thought I just needed to take the trip first. How could I know what the story would be like (coffee table photo book? Memoir? Biography of my great-grandmother?) until I’d taken the trip and figured out what it was. I bought myself an extravagant, lovely journal so I could at least write about things as they happened, every day. I carried that journal through eight states (nine if you count changing planes in Texas) and it is still blank.

Now I’m back home with a couple thousand photos and so many thoughts and memories and feelings to process. The trip was an amazing success. It was nothing like I imagined it would be. It was better than I hoped it would be, missing sunset-lit Airstream and all. It was quiet and it was often ordinary, except not really. I am probably not going to write a book about it. I’m not saying never, but what happened that I can’t really explain is that it doesn’t feel like it needs to be anymore. It’s gone in my head from, This is going to be so cool! I should write a book about it! to That was one of the coolest things I ever did. I’m so glad I went. I’m not sure if I’m a flake or if I’m just content with the experience, but I don’t need to.

Of course I very much want to document the trip for myself my brother and my kids and anyone else who is interested, but I’ll do it here instead of on the URL I bought a few years ago. I’m tempted to kick myself for failing after being gifted this rare opportunity, but I don’t think any book ever written because it should have been came out worth reading. The only good ones are the ones that have to be written and I don’t have one of those.

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This is the first stop on my trip, though it’s not really part of the 100 years ago trip – the house in Liberty, Missouri my grandmother lived in when she starting dating my grandfather in the mid 1930s. Her father built the house, and this is taken from the side. That porch. Swoon.

1 thought on “Chapter One

  1. Mom

    Swoon is right! It looks straight out of House Beautiful…and what is better than a porch swing? Nothing, that’s what.

    Reply

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