My 15-year-old, with her brand-new learner’s permit, has formally switched places in my car, from passenger seat to driver’s seat. The world, suddenly, is different for her, with the kind of freedom a rural kid gains with the keys to a car. The horizon is no longer a barrier but a temptation — move on, explore.

One year, I think, of us driving and talking — of everything from what to cook for dinner, to why I married her father, to the Black Plague. One year.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be…

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath…

— Langston Hughes