How It All Began

July 23, 2007

Filed in: Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, North Dakota

Close to six years ago, C’s second-grade teacher--a bit of a free spirit (some used the phrase “utter chaos” to describe her classroom, but C and I both loved her creativity)--sent him home with an assignment. Find out something unique about a family member and write about it.

Since he’d experienced firsthand every event of significance in his then-baby brother’s life, and since his father wasn’t home, that left moi. What’s unique about wiping up after sodden juice boxes, standing watch at the bottom of the slide and untangling Slinkies all day long? Not a thing.

C waited, pencil to paper, glowering. The rest of his afternoon was calling to him.

I thought back to my pre-kid days. Nothing unique there, sadly not even the R-rated bits. “Well,” I said desperately, “I’ve been to a lot of states.”

“How many,” he said, unconvinced.

“Well…” I counted. Living as I have nearly all my life in New England, you tend to knock back a solid handful just getting out and about.

Better yet: In the summer of 1985, I quit my job and with a friend drove 9,000 miles in a big loop around the country in a tiny car the color of a pencil. 37 states right there baby. Then there were a few random ones picked up in the intervening years (special shout-out to MP for Sunday morning bbq in AR). That left, miraculously--nay, uniquely--just four: Alaska. Hawaii. North Dakota. And Kansas.

“46!” I said. “How’s that?”

He shrugged, head bent over the page. It was good enough to get the homework out of the way, but still. Not a very satisfying number, 46. “You should do all 50.”

“Yuh,” I said back, picturing a week in, say, Kansas loaded down with a Pack ‘n’ Play, a stroller, and the requisite menagerie of I-can’t-get-to-sleep-without-it stuffed animals. “How ‘bout by the time I’m 50, okay? You can come too.”

He shrugged and slid off his chair with a look that said, “50! Do people even live to be that old?”