Day Four: Kitty Hawk to Charleston

Fifth grade is all about the Civil War. So far, Mack has written papers on Abraham Lincoln and the Confederate States of America, aced quizzes on pivotal battles and important generals, and plotted landmarks on a map. It was during the latter exercise that he realized our road trip would take us a stone's throw from the site of the first shot fired in the Civil War: Fort Sumter.

We researched the landmark ahead of time and planned to take the 2:30 boat from Patriots Point to Fort Sumter. He brought Dad's fancy camera so that he could take photos and share them with his classmates back in Mystic. It was going to be epic. But then... the Trump Shutdown shuttered another piece of American history.

And because Mom couldn't figure out how to jump the gate to an island, we did this instead: Enjoyed a morning walk on the Kitty Hawk beach, and then bought the audio book of "Becoming" by Michelle Obama and listened, as a family, to our first African American First Lady tell her poignant and moving life story as we drove south. In chapter 3, she tells the story of her great, great-grandfather, who was a slave in the low country of Georgetown, South Carolina. Shut out of universities and unions and well-paying jobs because of racist Jim Crow laws, her own grandfather left Georgetown to create a better life for his family in Chicago. Just about 75 years later, his granddaughter moved into the White House.

We listened to this story as we drove through Georgetown with our eyes wide open.

This is an amazing country, and we can do so much better than we're doing now.