Favorite Places

Hmm, I like lots of places (unlike people, I guess):

• any beach, but particularly St. George Island because it's home
• my grandmother's house, now Aunt Carolyn's house, the place my dad's side of the family gathers for family get-togethers
• underneath Wes's old bed in Moultrie--okay, before you snicker, I don't actually get under there, but I like pulling out the old boxes from there; they overflow with old family photos, old notes Wes wrote as a kid (my favorite is the one with a baby tooth attached), report cards (Yikes!)
• the old barn at Grandmother's house, particularly the hayloft
• London--anywhere in London--but particularly theatres, walking in, waiting for the show to start, anticipating the ice cream at the break--so civilized
• New York--the sheer rush of people (which I can take in small doses), the crowds of cars, the multiplicity of languages
• airports--I know it's weird, but airports and airplanes are places where I get lots of uninterrupted time for writing and for people watching
• Colorado when it's snowing and I'm on skis or when I've finished skiing for the day and I'm soaking in a hot tub with a beverage of choice in my hand, letting the hot bubbles remove all aches; I've only been twice, but it's one of those places, like London, that felt like another home almost immediately
• Delaware--all the places I visited when we lived there: Rehoboth Beach, the skating rink, the boardwalk where I had soft serve ice cream for the first time, the game room for the trailer park where we lived, the creek behind our trailer, the pool in which we swam during the summer and on which we skated in the winter, the church where I attended Awanas on Wednesday night, all the county fairs we attended in surrounding counties and even states because Dad believed in exploring new areas, the lake where my brother fell through the ice
• Apalachicola--the airport where I learned to drive on the deserted runways, the library I rode my bike to in fourth grade with my brother and sister as chaperones, the Tastee Freez for ice cream cones, the woods across from our house where my siblings and I used to swing on vines and play for hours, the backyard where we brought up worms for fishing with a hammer and a stake (Sopchoppy has a worm grunting festival--I didn't know that's what it was called until recently), the church where I attended Vacation Bible School, the pretty lantana planted across the street from the church, the community center where we held our first non-chaperoned party (every parent assumed someone else was chaperoning it--what a party!); walking to the drug store to buy Tiger Beat as a preteen
• Whigham--the high school where I graduated, the old gym with its wooden floors where I cheered and danced and flirted, the old oak tree where we held bonfires (Bruce Springsteen is playing in Hildegards right now, pulling me right back into the 80s), piney woods (the place to park near Farmers' Peanut Company), the haunted bridge, all the awesome haunted houses my parents put on for my youth group, the old country roads I used to ride whenever I wanted privacy (I'd just put the top down on my Midget convertible and ride and ride and ride), the bump that put a hole in my gas tank when I put eight people in the Midget, the main street where I rode in parades, the school grounds where we held the Rattlesnake Roundup, the grocery store where I worked in high school).

Okay, I clearly moved away from the idea of vacations and just explored places, but that was fun. It was like swimming in memories. The more I wrote, the more I remembered, underscoring the generative power of writing. Despite what my students say, we don't run out of stuff to write about. Writing begets writing. So many stories lurk in all those places, just waiting to be teased from the shadows. Maybe that's what I'll do during December: tease out some shadows.

PS: If anyone gets a chance, read the Family Dinner post a few posts below this one. It's pretty funny--and of course a true story.