How is life different after Lyddie's mother leaves?

Lyddie's mother leaves early in the book.  The family home is invaded by a bear, and Lyddie fiercely fends it off.  Unfortunately, Lyddie's mother takes the entire episode as a bad sign, and she wants the entire family to leave the farm and live with a relative.  Lyddie and her brother do not want to leave the farm.  It is their home, and they are holding out hope that their father will return.  Once Lyddie's mother leaves, Lyddie and her brother get on quite well.  They see to the chores that need to be done, and they manage to make it through the winter just fine.  The biggest change in Lyddie's life with her mother gone is that Lyddie is now very independent.  Her life is in her hands, and decisions about how to do things are hers.  In many ways, Lyddie is experiencing a freedom that she has never had before, and she likes it a lot.  That's why she is so afraid to enter Cutler's Tavern and begin working there a few chapters later.  She likes her independence, and she is loathe to give it up. 

Once I walk in that gate, I ain't free anymore, she thought. No matter how handsome the house, once I enter I'm a servant girl—no more than a black slave. She had been queen of the cabin...up there on the hill. But now someone else would call the tune.