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Vacation thoughts
We're taking a vacation, leaving this weekend. This will be the first time our family's gone anywhere for more than a weekend for anything other than a funeral, and the first time we've all gone together.
I have mixed feelings.
I'm looking forward to the trip, I really am. I've been wanting to take my family - okay, Michelle - to Colorado for many years and we've never had the chance.
What's giving me pause is that stop we're making on the way.
We're making the trip out sort of an Oregon Trail thing, which means going North to Nebraska before turning West and following the Platte river to Ft. Laramie, Wyoming. Along the way we'll see a shitload of rocks and monuments (like this and this), and I think it'll be an enjoyable trip.
I anticipate having fun on this trip, mostly through my kids who have never seen a rock larger than the boulder in our neighbor's garden. I like to drive and see new things. I love my sister and haven't seen her in a year and a half. Of the surviving Morris kids (3 of 5), she and I are the most alike and once we get past the small talk and getting re-acquainted greatly enjoy each other's company.
It just that we'll be making a stop along the way.
I haven't been to Nebraska since my mother died, and we'll be making the Weeping Water Haj to visit the ol' homestead. More than just the deaths of every adult relative over the age of 55, I have so much emotion tied up in that region that even now - days before we leave - I get a little shaky thinking about it.
Once upon a time, I was going to sever my ties to Kansas City and move there. There are a few James Taylor songs I heard during that time that still evoke strong imagery of the area.
There's an old man there for whom I waste an awful lot of negative energy, but who is so old that a revenge killing would be redundant.
The place is filled with memories of happier, easier times, not that long ago.
There's a lot of my childhood there, a disproportionate amount when you consider that I was raised in KC.
Buried there are every grandparent going back at least two generations, several aunts and uncles, my father, my mother, my older brother David...and there's enough room for me, too, when the time comes.
Much of who I am and how I came to be this way is there, and every time I've gone it's been with the knowledge that there was someone there from that place to act as a guide. Now, I go into that limestone-limned valley and there won't be anyone waiting, no matter how infirm or enfeebled, and it hurts. God how it hurts, and it surprises me how much.
It's going to be a roller-coaster trip.
I have mixed feelings.
I'm looking forward to the trip, I really am. I've been wanting to take my family - okay, Michelle - to Colorado for many years and we've never had the chance.
What's giving me pause is that stop we're making on the way.
We're making the trip out sort of an Oregon Trail thing, which means going North to Nebraska before turning West and following the Platte river to Ft. Laramie, Wyoming. Along the way we'll see a shitload of rocks and monuments (like this and this), and I think it'll be an enjoyable trip.
I anticipate having fun on this trip, mostly through my kids who have never seen a rock larger than the boulder in our neighbor's garden. I like to drive and see new things. I love my sister and haven't seen her in a year and a half. Of the surviving Morris kids (3 of 5), she and I are the most alike and once we get past the small talk and getting re-acquainted greatly enjoy each other's company.
It just that we'll be making a stop along the way.
I haven't been to Nebraska since my mother died, and we'll be making the Weeping Water Haj to visit the ol' homestead. More than just the deaths of every adult relative over the age of 55, I have so much emotion tied up in that region that even now - days before we leave - I get a little shaky thinking about it.
Once upon a time, I was going to sever my ties to Kansas City and move there. There are a few James Taylor songs I heard during that time that still evoke strong imagery of the area.
There's an old man there for whom I waste an awful lot of negative energy, but who is so old that a revenge killing would be redundant.
The place is filled with memories of happier, easier times, not that long ago.
There's a lot of my childhood there, a disproportionate amount when you consider that I was raised in KC.
Buried there are every grandparent going back at least two generations, several aunts and uncles, my father, my mother, my older brother David...and there's enough room for me, too, when the time comes.
Much of who I am and how I came to be this way is there, and every time I've gone it's been with the knowledge that there was someone there from that place to act as a guide. Now, I go into that limestone-limned valley and there won't be anyone waiting, no matter how infirm or enfeebled, and it hurts. God how it hurts, and it surprises me how much.
It's going to be a roller-coaster trip.