Free The River Queen by Mary Morris Page B

This was thirty-eight years to the day before I left on this journey. He had my name embossed in gold and inside he wrote, among other things, “This book with its blank pages is for you to bring to life.”
    My father never visited me that year. He was loathe to travel beyond the safe confines of his world as he defined it. At the airport his eyes filled with tears as he rushed back to his car and waved good-bye. Inside the journal he gave me I wrote of revolution. I hung out in the Latin Quarter with French students, determined to overthrow the state. When May 1968 began I found myself at the barricades, embracing the struggle. My last words in that journal were “Shit on them all.” It was my rebellious year.
    My daughter, Kate, purchased for me the journal I am using now. She bought it when we were in Florence just weeks before I was to begin this Mississippi journey and Kate was heading off to college. We had always been close. In baby pictures you can’t tell us apart. We love olives, chocolate, and burned onions. I don’t know anyone else who loves these three things. And now she was leaving. Who would borrow my silver belt, my cashmere shells? With whom would I play Balderdash or work out at the gym?
    But, despite our similarities, Kate and I had our issues. She was pulling away and I was desperate to hold on. I was petrified of her leaving and that made her all the more ready to go. We quarreled about this over the years as I think many mothers and daughters do. But I left my parents’ home and never went back. I assumed she would too.
    I feared this trip to Florence would be our last hurrah. We had ambitious plans for our time together, but wound up spending most of our afternoons hanging out at a café in the Piazza della Republica. One morning I spilled espresso all over my journal and was upset. The pages turned wrinkled and brown.
    Later we went to see an exhibit of drawings by Michelangelo. On the wall were framed pages of brown manuscript with drawings and writings in Michelangelo’s own hand. “What’s this?” I asked my daughter.
    â€œOh, just some other artist’s coffee-stained journal,” she replied. We went into a paper store and Kate bought me a new journal for my river voyage. “To my favorite traveler,” she inscribed on the inside cover. “You make everything beautiful.” On one of its creamy pages I begin to sketch. I’m not very good at this, but I enjoy passing the time. I’m trying to draw the villa. I do landscapes, still lifes, sleeping cats. I almost never paint when I’m at home, but I’ve done this for years when I’m on the road.
    I’m not sure how long I’ve been here when a car pulls up and a man and a woman get out. They are nicely dressed, which I am not, and they look at me and smile. “What’re you up to?” the man says.
    I’m embarrassed now. “Oh, I just like the building.”
    He glances at my painting and nods approvingly. “Well, do you know what you’re sitting on?”
    â€œOh, no, I don’t.” I jump up, thinking that the cement block I’m seated on is some kind of heirloom.
    â€œYou see,” he goes on, “the carriages would pull up next to this stone block so that the ladies wouldn’t have to show their ankles when they stepped down. It was considered indiscreet. Come back later. You can take a tour.”
    â€œOh, I’d love a tour. It looks so beautiful. But I’m on a boat and we’re only here for a short while. We have to sail.” Even as I say this, I’m aware that “sail” isn’t the right word, but how do I call what we do? Float, putter, drift? Careen? Nothing seems quite right.
    â€œOh, yeah? Where are you sailing?”
    â€œDown the Mississippi,” I tell them. “I’m writing a book about it.”
    They seem intrigued. “Well,” the man says, “we’re