Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad
Partly due to necessity, partly due to family, partly due to personal whim, I have, of late, been a certified road warrior. In the last week I've traversed the country on a southerly journey that took me from cool, green Minnesota to the blistering white sands of the Gulf.
Stark contrasts in geography. Stark contrasts in society. Countless reminders of the basic humanity that unites us all.
Here I, a mom from Kentucky, sat at a table with a sad-eyed Iraqi girl, and her own, unyielding mother. She smiled at me and said she liked my accent. I smiled back and said I liked hers. Through an interpreter her mother spoke confidently, unquestioningly, of disciplining children, of cultural differences, of what is right and of what is wrong. I never saw that graceful girl again.
I stood on the banks of the Mississippi where Twain's own eye had scanned the horizon and I thought about just how far that scruffy little river boy traveled in his life. I felt his unspeakable sadness, I treasured his mustache-twitching humor, and I remembered that, no matter the sophistication of his audience, he always celebrated the best and the worst that makes us human.
I traveled the red dirt roads of Georgia. I mucked through the muck only dairy cows can produce, I swatted at the flies and felt the sweat roll down my back. I came face to face with the hard reality of decent jobs no fat, lazy American will perform, and of the "illegal" dedication of sweetly sad men who gladly sweat through 15-hour days to provide for far away family growing up, growing away, without them.
I saw the handmade implements of men forced to create in order to survive. I saw how ugly we can become, regardless of country, regardless of race, regardless of religion--I was reminded that the brutish animal isn't far below our shaved and deodorized exterior--and I reveled in man's own will to live, to care, to share.
I thought about a country gone mad over a gross maternal miscarriage of justice, of a people more captivated by cupcake wars than by stopping war. I looked forward to heading north on I-65, to looking into familiar faces, to hearing a familiar laugh. I marveled at the resolve of those who came before me--the steely will to make this home for all of us--for those with accents just like mine and for those with uncommon poetry on their tongues.
And I was grateful. For it all.
