My maternal grandmother was born in her house somewhere in Kentucky. The exact location remains a mystery, with no legal records to confirm her birthplace. There's no official documentation proving her existence, yet here she is, leaving an indelible mark with her six children and numerous grandchildren.
During my childhood, I spent most of my days living with my grandparents, but I held a special bond with my grandmother. Admittedly, many of my cousins also lived with her at some point, but I stayed with her the longest until the arrival of the great-grandkids. Our home was a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house that always needed some kind of repair. I never had a room to myself because we constantly had relatives dropping in and staying with us. Reflecting back, I don’t think I can remember a time when there was not a house full of kids and stray dogs in the yard. Even upon returning from college, I would often walk into my childhood home and be given a baby to hold or a dog to feed. In many ways, I hoped that would never change.
Amidst the struggles, there were moments of happiness, especially when my grandmother shared stories from her childhood. I would sit at her feet, captivated by tales of her travels in a trailer across the southern states, never knowing where she would wake up the next day. Although she grew up in poverty, I couldn't help but feel how liberated she seemed in her past life. I often wondered why she chose a life of stability over the open road.
There were many occasions when the stability she had built would be disrupted by chaos. My grandfather had a habit of drinking with his younger friends, often extending into the early morning hours. Though my grandmother despised the smell of smoke and cheap alcohol, she never confronted them about it. Instead, she would sit silently in the living room while the commotion in the back of the house grew rowdier. Eventually, my grandfather would stumble out of the smokey room and request dinner around midnight. And my grandmother would always be there to prepare it for him. I grew to resent this weekend routine, but she held it together for the most part. However, there were nights when it became too much for her, and she would walk away, down the road. She didn't have a driver's license and couldn't operate a car, but she could always walk. Later in life, I learned that taking these walks was her way of finding solace. I’ve learned that there’s not much a walk can’t resolve. She would eventually return, but she would often tell me that if she knew how to drive, she would leave for good.
That's my earliest memory of yearning to leave. In truth, I've been leaving since I was about two years old when my parents divorced. I would split my time between Alabama and Texas, and just as I began to settle, it would be time to leave again. Leaving became ingrained in my being. It became a part of my identity.
Ironically, I grew up in a rural town with a population of less than 1,000 people. In that context, leaving was seen as an act of betrayal, abandoning the community and forsaking one's hometown. On one hand, people would advise us to escape while we still could, but you could hear the sadness in their voices. The departure of young people meant that the town would become desolate.
Getting my driver’s license was one of the most important moments in my life. It wasn’t because I demanded the freedom of driving around town and picking up my friends. It was because a driver's license was the first step to leaving my little town. If I was able to drive, then nobody could stop me. I could find work, I could find a job, I could get out. My own desire to leave stemmed from my family environment (not necessarily the rural one), but it would take almost ten years to reconcile the difference between the two.