Luckily for all of us keeping track, she still managed -- with a safe 10 and 2 grasp on the wheel at all times, no doubt -- to give us some peeks into a journey that ended far more differently than it began. Mary and Patricia, with a newly banged-up knee, got in the car together in our hometown of Louisville, Ky., on Sunday, March 20.
By Wednesday the 23rd, the trip was taking its toll on both of them. The anxiety, for Mary at least, was mounting more quickly than the miles driven.
So the next day, Mary put Patricia on a plane and made the rest of the trip alone, stumbling across rapidly climbing gas rates, all her favorite songs via her iPod playlist, a trucker who watched out for her and a shady fellow traveler up to no good.
A tidbit I really love is the darling Marky Mark Wahlberg look-alike who greeted her at the California border. No, she wasn't trying to smuggle any fruit from a buggy place into our Western paradise, but if I'd been her, I would've tried to think of some way to prolong that all-too-brief conversation.
Check out her posts from the road -- just keep scrolling down -- and don't forget the Twitter feed on the upper right. There are photos and videos, too, so don't skip anything.
Like Mary's already said, this isn't the end of the story. She may be back here now in Burbank, but so is Pat, just starting a completely new chapter of her life at an assisted living facility. Since getting here was kind of an ordeal, the travel itself has likely been a distraction. Now may come some real adjustments for everyone involved, mostly Pat.
Her new home is lovely, but it's not her home just yet. She may settle in, meaning unpack her clothes and arrange the furniture as soon as the movers arrive. But that's a superficial kind of settling in.
There's plenty more to come. So keep checking back. Again, we haven't decided on a name change for the blog yet, but today I'm calling it MarysStillMovingMom.
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