Trip Report

on driving to Tennessee

Day one. The baby was happy in the car. We listened to The Shins, Lydia Loveless, the first chapter of Moby Dick, Olivia Rodrigo. There was so much rain on the highway. Wes told Ramona, “I’d get poison ivy for you,” which escalated to, “I would die for you.” In Bethesda we stayed in Dan’s aunt’s condo with its own elevator. Within ten minutes Wes was stuck inside the elevator, stomping his feet, wailing for us to get him out of there. We got him out. Instead of succumbing to a lifelong fear of elevators, he invented elaborate excuses to continue using the elevator. He slept in Dan’s cousin’s horse-themed room. “I love Bethesda,” he said, half dreaming.

Day two. More rain. Breakfast from a supermarket hot bar. In the parking lot a guy was getting arrested. Rain flooded Roanoke as we checked into our motel from last year, seventy bucks for the night, pet fee mysteriously waived. I took Wes to the seemingly abandoned indoor pool. At dinner our livestock guardian dog was terrified, no difference in his mind between downtown Roanoke and Times Square. Wes yelled at us about needing all the lights off before he could sleep. Two minutes later he was out cold. The baby slept through the night and I woke up drenched in milk.

Why do I love it? My whole family in a Hyundai Tucson. Back in Connecticut the house could burn down. There’s nothing to do on a road trip except be on a road trip. At rest stops I change the baby on the backseat while Dan persuades the dog to pee and Wes inexpertly squirts ketchup on a burger. Cramming your life into a Hyundai Tucson exposes your life for what it is. I emerge from a gas station bathroom and see my husband cleaning the windshield with one arm, holding our baby in the other.

Day three. Dan took the kids to Waffle House. Me and the dog shared motel eggs and sausage in the trunk of the car. Four hundred miles later we got to Sewanee and met Justin and Dan Hornsby at Shenanigans. I put the baby in Justin’s arms. Hornsby asked Wes if he liked to draw, produced colored paper and pens and played with Wes until we went back to our Airbnb to get ready for bed.

Day four. Up early with the baby. Took a long walk around campus and through the woods, Wes listing last summer’s highlights. Met Justin after his class and we gave a lunchtime talk on publishing. Answered our students’ questions while eating dining hall tacos. Ramona laughed for the first time at dinner when I sang “Baby Beluga” sillier than normal. I called her a little lady and the boys riffed on the baby doing little lady things: taking the train to meet her cousin-in-law, getting spit up on her kerchief. I liked Hornsby’s hat so much he gave it to me. Wes got bouncy balls from a twenty-five-cent machine and bounced them all over the restaurant. When the balls bounced beneath a table of elderly women, I told Wes, too bad! The balls have bounced from our lives forever! and pushed him toward the parking lot. Justin hung back, retrieved the bouncy balls, became a hero.

Day five. Ramona woke up at 3:40. The morning was long and blurry. We went to get Megan Nolan from the Sewanee Inn and the baby cried in the back of Justin’s Subaru. Hornsby got out to rock the car like a cradle. In the afternoon Ramona fell asleep on my right arm while I wrote out questions for Megan. On stage I was too tired to be nervous, which was perfect. Megan, too, was perfect. Dan brought the kids to the reception so I could nurse the baby before dinner. In a purple shirt down to his knees, Wes introduced himself to my students from last year. At dinner I drank half a martini and waved away a glass of wine. Our waitress said, “I got you, baby.”

I dislike my postpartum sloppiness: forgotten vocabulary. Accounting errors. Milk leaking through my clothes. The earliest I can be anywhere is seven minutes late. My body is heavy and always contorted into weird shapes while I feed or comfort the baby. I find myself wanting to apologize—but to who, and for what? Having control over how people perceive me was always an illusion. But you can miss an illusion.

Day six. Drove to a farmhouse outside of Asheville. My limbs ached, folded into the backseat with the kids. To avoid stopping every two hours I pumped milk and fed Ramona bottles in the car. She cried between feedings. We went out for barbecue. Dan didn’t eat and I realized he was sick.

Day seven. Walking the dog, we accidentally hiked five miles and up 1200 feet. I kept asking Dan if he was okay and he kept saying yes like he does when he’s not. On our descent we passed a man whose shirt said EASTERN FLORIDA. “You’ve been to eastern Florida?” Wes asked him. “That must have been interesting for you.” I fed Ramona on a swing hanging from a tree. Bad food in Asheville, then back to the farm to build a fire and make s’mores. After the kids fell asleep I finished the edits on a story I wrote while pregnant and sold when Ramona was four days old. My editor wanted more about “the reality of the maternal relationship.” I tried.

Day eight. Hot in North Carolina. Morning walk along Laurel Creek. I made Dan take pictures of me with the kids. I sat on a rock to breastfeed Ramona and cried about how bad I looked in the pictures. Tacos from a truck in Hot Springs were the best food of the trip. Dan’s voice was hoarse. Kids now sneezing. Putting the baby to bed, I listened to every version of “Angel from Montgomery” and felt terrified of how close I came to not having her.

When Ramona cries, Wes says to her, “Your mama’s coming,” or, “Your mom’s got you,” as if her mom isn’t also his mom. He’s right, sort of. I mother them differently. She’s three months and he’s eight years—but the truth is I always mothered Wes differently. It hurts to remember how bad I felt throughout his birth and infancy. But another truth is that my love for Ramona is inseparable from my love for Wes. I only had her because he showed me what a baby becomes. He taught me how to do this, all of it.

Day nine. The owner of the farmhouse introduced us to her animals, was surprised when Wes picked up a chicken, then a goat. The drive to Richmond was long. Dan barely complained about how sick he felt. We checked into The Jefferson Hotel to make Wes happy and because it’s dog-friendly. The heat was swampy, unrelenting. Sammy was too scared of the city to pee. The monuments are gone. Buz and Ned’s is gone. Our old apartment building, a former cigarette factory, is still standing.

Day ten. Heat wave. All of us a little sick. Canceled my plans with Juliana, which made me sad. I only half remember Richmond from the two years we lived there, years that feel more remote than any other time in my life. Richmond was where Dan got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and I went crazy. Richmond is cursed, or else doesn’t want us. It’s a beautiful town. We had to leave.

Day eleven. Made it all the way to New York before getting stuck in bad traffic. My jaw hurt from smiling at the baby so much. I want my children to feel they belong to more than one place. These days I find it hard to take seriously any friendship that doesn’t include them, though I wonder if that will change. Got home to find it was a hundred degrees inside our bedroom. A leak had cracked the kitchen ceiling. We lasted one night, then got back in the car and drove to Dan’s parents’ house.