Sentimental Journey

I thought this was a great picture.  This was all that was left on the lot where mom's house used to be.  It holds a lot more meaning than just a cool tractor picture.

Well, mom's been talking to me about it for years, but this year we finally did it.  I went with mom on her sentimental journey.  She takes it every year, but this is the first year I went along.

The nice thing about it is that I finally got to see the places I've heard so much about over the years.  Her high school, which was this amazing old building that was a K-12 school when she went there.  It honestly looked like an old college.  I got to see the homes she lived in growing up, which in one case was just an empty lot with a tractor and wildflowers on it.  I took a picture of it, and it's one of my favorite from the trip.  We went by the  house I grew up in, and it was so much smaller than I remember.  Cliched, but true.  I also got a picture of the Carter house, my neighbor that I actually remember from across the street.  She loved me and used to buy me things all the time.  I was four the last time I saw her.

The funnest time, though, was going to Uncle Rex and Aunt Joyce's house.  He's my mom's older brother, and the only member of her immediate family left.  He was a riot, and I had forgotten how funny he was.  It's been 20 years since I'd seen him last, and I'm sad about that.  He and Aunt Joyce are salt of the earth people.  Straight forward, with lots of common sense and hard work.  And, he's brilliant. Truly.  He really is, but you'd never know it.  He sees no need to flaunt it.  I love that about him.

I was talking to him and telling him how much I missed the path that led between his and my mamaw's house.  There's a fence separating the houses now, since my mamaw passed away many years ago.  He looked at me and said, "Now hon, those days are gone!  There's no need to pine away for that."  That statement struck me with the matter-of-fact, common sense-ness of it all. But that's the way he is.

It was mom's sentimental journey, but so much more for me I think.  It's nice to have roots and to be reminded of all of those who invested in me and our family.  But that's all it is.  It's a reminder to keep me grounded and focused, because after all:  "Those days are gone!"  I'm so glad I got to live them, though.