December 19 Car ride. What did you see? How did
it smell? Did you eat anything as you drove there? Who were you with?
This was the year my mother, the woman who birthed me, the woman who
spent the majority of her life as a maven of Washington, D.C., with her country
clubs and luncheons and charity events and season tickets at the Kennedy
Center, this was the year the woman whom I refer to as Emily Gilmore on this blog, this was the year she decided that Utah might be a
nice place to call home.
My sister, NeverNakedBeth gets full praise and
all glory here. She really
does. She spent a large portion of
her summer vacation preparing Emily’s house for sale and then once it was sold,
she took another vacation and went and packed up things, hauled tuckloads to
Goodwill, got things ready for the movers and then shoved valuables into Emily’s car
and drove it from Maryland to Utah.
I rode shotgun. The whole way. I only was allowed to drive Emily's car for about twenty
minutes before NeverNakedBeth nearly died of heart
failure and decided that she would do all the driving, thank you very
much.
We laughed. We cried. We listened to books about the Mormon polygamists
and foster children. We watched
movies and learned the beauty of a RedBox video
rental. We can now tell you how to
locate a quad latte in even the most backwards of towns in the middle of
nowhere in America. We went to the top of the Arch in St. Louis and buzzed by Budweiser to wave at the Clydesdales, we met a very
dear friend of mine whom I had never actually met in person, NeverNakedBeth insisted that
we take a naked photo for naked Friday, together we scrounged for anything that was
remotely edible for two vegetarians, I regaled her with stories of my
adventures in Rocky Mountain National Park and, if it is even possible, I think
we became even better sisters than we were before.
It’s a long drive from Maryland to Utah. Long and flat and rather boring, honestly. I have made that drive, across America,
more times than perhaps is really humanly necessary. I can’t remember it ever being that much fun.
