I kept meaning to find something—a vocation, a passion, a marketable way to spend my time. But after Molly was born, the quest simply didn’t seem to matter so much. Unconcerned with a career trajectory, I bounced around to a few different jobs, never quite finding the right fit. This didn’t bother me, because without really planning it, I had lucked into a life I loved so much I never wanted it to change. The quilt shop became my second home. I loved the creative energy of the shop, the dry smell of the fabric, the crisp metallic bite of my super-sharp scissors on the cutting table. Working at Minerva’s shop became more than a part-time job during the school year. It was a place of refuge from the empty hours of the school day.

Molly glances over; I see her watching my busy hands.

“What?” I ask.

“Did you know Athena is the goddess of quilting?”

“She’s the Warrior Woman,” I correct her. “It’s one of the few things I remember from mythology.”

“Most people don’t know she’s also the goddess of arts and crafts,” Molly says, full of authority, the way she gets sometimes. “Domestic crafts require planning and strategy, too. That’s how the logic goes, anyway.”

“Athena was superwoman, then. Waging war and weaving baskets.” I settle back with the quilt draped over my lap and try to focus on feeling like a goddess. My stitches meander into overlapping spirals. These will be a reminder of the cyclical nature of families, the comings and goings of generations. They say a child leaves home in phases. She is weaned: Molly weaned herself as soon as she learned to walk, preferring a binky she could carry around in her pocket. Then she starts school. Goes on her first sleepover. To sleep-away camp. A field trip to the state capitol. She learns to drive, and each time she heads out the door, it takes her out of reach, on her own. This is simply the next step in the process. She’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.

I swear.

“I spotted an A,” Molly says abruptly, bringing me back to the present. “The Aladdin Motel. And there’s a B—Uncle Porky’s Burger Barn….”

The hunt is on—an old alphabet game we used to play on long car trips. We quickly find our way through to the letter J, calling out names of towns and cafés, cribbed from highway signs, billboards and truck stops. The town of Jasper keeps the game moving. The Q is found on a hand-lettered roadside “Bar-B-Q,” and we are grateful for colloquial spelling habits. We never get stuck on X, thanks to the freeway exit signs, and Z is found on a radio station billboard, KIZZ: Downhome Country for Uptown Folks.

* * *

In a Big Boy restaurant in Franklin, a young mother is trying to work the newspaper Sudoku puzzle while her toddler, strapped into a little wooden high chair, makes monkeyshines to get her attention. He leans as far sideways as the high chair permits, makes a sound like a cat, bangs his fork on the table, crams dry Cheerios into his mouth and uses a chicken nugget to smear ketchup on his tray like a baby Jackson Pollock. The young mother tucks her hair behind her ear and fills in another blank space on the puzzle.