Or we’ve become familiar with spending entire days working from home, alone. Jess Graham’s situation – home and school and work within the confines of an eight-square-foot truck cab – might have seemed extreme a decade ago.īut these days, many of us have become accustomed to our work selves, family selves and social selves coming together in a single space, like mother and daughter crammed into the tractor of an 18-wheeler. And so we’re walking through it together… as I’m driving down the road,” Graham says. “We’ve had dry erase markers, where she’s just writing down the windshield a math problem that she’s struggling with. In the absence of a chalkboard, Graham taught Halima long division using an unlikely scratch pad. Halima studied geography whenever the pair crossed state lines, or made pit stops at historical sites and practiced math by budgeting for their meals each day. The daily responsibilities of a long-haul trucker became learning opportunities.
#Venture forthe elmira ny tv#
Halima would roller skate around the truck stop parking lots where they took their breaks, and charm truckers in the driver’s lounge into handing over the TV remote so she could watch the Disney Channel. “ certain things we did in survival mode that I turned into a game,” Graham remembers. Graham says she tried to make life on the road exciting for her daughter, enriching even. Graham had never considered trucking as a profession before, but she knew she had to put miles between herself and her daughter’s father, who Graham says was verbally and financially abusive to her throughout the course of their romantic relationship. “I came in, packed her up, went to the school, told her that she is no longer enrolled, and we hit the road,” Graham says.įor the better part of a year, Graham and Halima lived in the truck. In her wallet she had the tens and twenties in cash she’d squirreled away for years and a freshly issued commercial trucking license.Īnd in the cab of her truck, there was a vacant bunk reserved for someone special: her ten-year-old daughter Halima. So she got behind the wheel of her new 18-wheeler and drove to the house she once shared with her ex-partner. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or NPR One.
This story is adapted from the latest episode of Rough Translation.
0 kommentar(er)
