flywheel

matt began a ragtag little group of folks who share not much other than a desire to put words to all the experience, beauty, life, feelings, imagery, etc. that surround. it's a writing group, just for the purpose of encouraging one another and pushing each other to stop thinking about writing and just get going actually writing.

i am a member of the group.

this is a funny thing because 100% guarantee, i would not be if i were not married to matt mooney.

there are weekly assignments. the last assignment i had was 2001.

i'll use this little space for my assignments...hopefully i'll actually do these, which wasn't always the case in college (sorry, mom & dad).

the assignment was to write descriptively about something in your childhood.  here goes.

i think the station wagon may have had a uhaul when it pulled out of the dusty louisiana driveway.  not sure how the bikes would've gotten up north without it. leaving the cotton fields and the cypress trees to endure the sweltering heat with out us for a few weeks, a brave mama & four children leave town. tommy rode shotgun.  he was 15, legal driving age in the state of louisiana.  he would help mama drive some of the 20 hours because daddy had to stay home to work.  dad would meet us there later.  it was, his place, after all....where he had been born and where he had spent every summer and where his daddy had a retail store in the old downtown. gabe and glenna and i were in the middle-back seat of the chevrolet caprice station wagon.  the back-back, packed full.  blue and wood panelling streaking up I-55 through deep south, to memphis, onto illinois where we would overheat and stay the night in effingham.  as an 8 year old little girl in the backseat of that chevrolet, i have no idea what we did to pass the time on such a long trip.  coloring?  games?  did my siblings and i fight in the backseat?  did mom threaten to pull over if we didn't stop?  no clue.  but i do know i didn't mind it.  it was a long trip and at the end was a whole new world.
we had been going to northern michigan for only a few summers now but long enough to know that i loved it.  my cousins were there and aunts and uncles and grandparents that i didn't see much.  a summer community on the banks of lake michigan with swimming, biking, sailing, new friends and new adventures.  the beginning of this trip was in my hometown.  now, there is nothing wrong with my hometown, it's a beautiful little place with wonderful people.  a tiny farming town in a tiny parish in the mississippi delta of northern louisiana.  we had a sonic and pizza hut and a few red lights.  that's about it.  so that long trip in the station wagon, it was nothing to endure compared to the world that sat waiting for me, the one in stark contrast to my day to day southern life.  my kid brother and i even loved the gas stations we stopped at along the way, with all their drink and junk food options.  then, there was the big boy.  a hamburger restaurant named "big boy" with a huge statue of a little boy outside holding his hamburger high in the air.  when we started to see big boy restaurants we knew we were up north...no more sonics or shoneys, just the big boy.  whose food was nothing to write home about, but we loved it.

the landscape would change as we crossed into michigan.  within an hour or 2, pines trees seemed taller than i could see.  i would press my hand on the window and feel the cool.  then a break in the trees would show walloon lake off in the distance to the left and a few minutes later on highway 131 the chevrolet caprice station wagon would hit the top of a hill and there, you could see it.  the first glimpse every summer was always pretty breathtaking.  the light blue sky, white cotton candy clouds, dark blue of lake michigan with it's whitecaps scattered all over the bay.  it was like the angelic course sang hallelujah when you first saw it.  and the air, just started to smell good.  

the caprice stopped and the long trip was over, but it had all just begun. unloading bicycles and bags, getting groceries and trying to see friends from last summer.  thinking of how we'd spend all the money we saved over the last year on candy from symons general store or on dominoes pizza delivery.  can you imagine?  you just pick up the phone, call someone and they bring you a pizza?!  my little brother and i had never heard of something so amazing.  unpacking bags full of swimsuits for the day and sweatshirts for the night.  cool in the summer?  who ever heard of such a thing!?  our excitement was palpable as the crisp and cool breeze off lake michigan and warm rays of sun seemed to both kiss our cheeks in unison.
but it wasn't just about the amazing weather, was it?  and as good as big boy hamburger or a dominoes pizza seemed...it really wasn't very good at all.  and our new friends and activities, they were ridiculously free and fun, but it wasn't about them either.
it was about the adventure of it all.  it was about the newness and change, if even only for a few weeks. these little southern eyes of mine, behind their thick glasses saw a whole new world that i had never seen before and it was just the beginning.  i was now hooked. not just on this beautiful place that held so much meaning for generations in my family, but i became addicted to the adventure and the excitement of newness and stepping away from the familiar to the unfamiliar.  to diversity and eyes being opened to things i never knew existed.  
and today, that craving remains.  thanks to summer after summer of heading north in the caprice station wagon.