For the past 10 days I have been on a road trip with my four kids. We have seen so much-- mountains, the Mississippi River, history museums, hotel pools, what feels like a million miles of farmland, country stores, Beale Street in Memphis, tributes to Elvis, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, baseball games, fireworks stands, signs about Jesus, signs about triple X rated bookstores, fast food restaurants for days and a lot of open road. We visited family, jumped on trampolines, swam at water parks, cheered on cousins at swim meets and baseball games. We laughed a lot. I threatened to pull over a lot and maybe once said one of my kids was going to have to find a ride home to Michigan. We had to pull over during a tornado warning and wait out the storm with strangers in a small Kentucky town. We heard the news about the Supreme Court overturning the ban on gay marriage and we cheered in the minivan as we headed across another state.
I have so many things I want to say and write about. So many! And I will, when we get back home. But for now, I am thinking so much about history--visiting it, learning about it, seeing it, living it, creating it.
Each stop we've made has impacted my kids and me. We've had discussions about what it was like when...what we would do if...We talked about the whys and hows. We talked about Elvis and the south and baseball and civil rights and equal rights and Johnny Cash and my aunt's dementia and my mother's mental health and why she still smokes and needs so much medicine; and how beautiful the mountains are and the red dirt and how hot it was in Memphis; and how there are good people in the world and also bad people, and trust and fear and so much more.
We talked about how our country is complicated just like family can be, and how there is so much to love but also things that we hope change and how we can be a part of it all.
This road trip with everything we saw and everything we did and talked about will be part of our family history. I hope my kids remember it forever, I know I will.
Saw this quote on Instagram this week and well, I love it.
I have so many things I want to say and write about. So many! And I will, when we get back home. But for now, I am thinking so much about history--visiting it, learning about it, seeing it, living it, creating it.
Each stop we've made has impacted my kids and me. We've had discussions about what it was like when...what we would do if...We talked about the whys and hows. We talked about Elvis and the south and baseball and civil rights and equal rights and Johnny Cash and my aunt's dementia and my mother's mental health and why she still smokes and needs so much medicine; and how beautiful the mountains are and the red dirt and how hot it was in Memphis; and how there are good people in the world and also bad people, and trust and fear and so much more.
We talked about how our country is complicated just like family can be, and how there is so much to love but also things that we hope change and how we can be a part of it all.
This road trip with everything we saw and everything we did and talked about will be part of our family history. I hope my kids remember it forever, I know I will.
Saw this quote on Instagram this week and well, I love it.
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