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The holidays are always a time to think about family. When I was growing up, the holidays meant travel because we would go to family or family would come to us. And often, after dinner was eaten, dishes washed and presents opened, the downtime would slowly fill with family stories – and sometimes even family photos.
I’m thinking about family connections a lot for another reason too.
I’ve launched myself on a completely overwhelming project: to organize the boxes and albums of family photos in my guardianship as well as my own rolls and rolls of prints – then to scan, tag and upload them so that captions can be added and corrected and prints can be made for anyone who has been looking for a copy of that exact photo since forever.
Flipping through the stacks, I’m flooded with memories, realizing that it hasn’t been just me growing and changing each year but my entire family. The family portraits from the early 1900’s are followed by graduation portraits, wedding photos – and then first Christmases.
Even as I wade deeper and deeper through the boxes, wondering how I convinced myself this was a good idea, I’m grateful for the obsessive labeling habit I got into after helping with tornado clean up in high school and aunts, uncles and cousins who I hope will step in to help me correct and caption many of these images once I get them scanned and posted!
The thing is, this project isn’t just for me, or even for us. There’s a whole new generation of nieces and nephews having their first, second and third Christmases now. Their photo albums may be online instead of on the shelf. But the people, and the meaning, will be the same.
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Since moving to Phoenix, we’ve only been back to Kansas once – a lightening quick holiday tour of four cities where friends and family live, in wicked winter driving conditions and with an international flight out of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor to catch within hours of getting back to Arizona. It was a good but hardly thoughtful trip, a blur of hugs & faces & snow under that familiar big Midwest sky.
This time we flew back (thanks to an unbelievable sale on airfare). Cutting out four days of driving gave us more time, and there were fewer deadlines and less homework to keep track of.
Should it have felt like a trip home?
It didn’t.
As we drove through places so familiar, I felt recognition but not nostalgia. I realized that even as we pulled out in the U-Haul just over two years ago, the house my family owned for 20 years was already becoming past and I had to remind myself to take one last look in the side view mirror, in case I wanted that memory for later, just before we slid around the corner.
Today, I can show what matters most to me about Kansas in a single photo of my cousin’s bookshelf.
This is why, wherever I end up, I’ll be drawn back from time to time, making the drive or taking the flight.
And from now on, this is the time of year I want to visit. The green of summer is at its lushest, the rivers are high and the earliest fields are beginning to boast hay bales instead of faded corn. In a far more modest way than the flashy bright pinks and oranges of the desert sky, the sunsets can be spectacular.
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OK. Maybe there’s a little bit of nostalgia after all.
The only thing better than getting to see the world is getting to see it along with someone who means the world to me – thank you for everything…
… I can’t wait to see what comes next!
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11 little things a girl from Kansas loves about living in Phoenix…
– desert plants like cacti and palo verdes
– wearing my “summer clothes” year round
– amazing sunsets
– sounds of movement: traffic, light rail, and helicopters
– downtown is flat but surrounded by mountains
– biking to school
– seeing planes que up for landing at Sky Harbor
– the tunnel on the 10
– being about 5 hours from both LA and Nogales
– desert driving gives me the big sky feeling of my Flint Hills
– palm trees
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| From Phoenix (2010) |
This year, winter break means two trips. The second I’ll be describing shortly, but the first (the one I’m on at the moment, actually, is about family, and friends (or fronds, as my phone would prefer me to type) and holidays. From start to finish, we’ll be in six states but I bet that our first day drive from Phoenix, AZ to Elk City, OK will be a tough record to beat.
A few short notes from the road:
On a roadtrip long, long ago, my mother mentioned that those blue shipping trucks with the yellow Werner logos remind her of her cousin. Now, whenever I see them I think of family, and they’re everywhere.
Here are the lights of Albuquerque, New Mexico. This was our first goal – we wanted to get at least this far. While it wasn’t that late when we passed through – maybe around 7pm – it had been this dark for at least an hour. Stopping was really, really tempting! But we pushed on…
When on a roadtrip one of the most important things is keeping your car in top gear. In our case we’ve been considering new tires for a little while now, so we’ve Steven’s been keeping a close eye on them. We started day 2 by topping off the air pressure in Elk City after a major breakfast lunch.
And finally, don’t forget to enjoy the stops along the way. While the goal is technically to end up where we began – a full circuit – we wouldn’t be making the trip in the first place if it wasn’t for the people we’ll be seeing along the way. At my aunt and uncle’s house, we frosted a large tray of tiny cookies before my cousins and their kids arrived for dinner. We had a really lovely stay (thank you!) and it was great to see everyone. For our route, see the Google map below, which may need to be zoomed out a bit.
Now we’re in Lawrence, where it was nearly snowing when we pulled in through a wintry haze, and after the dentist on Tuesday afternoon – the 6th state and holidays at Steven’s family. So… until the next entry, I’ll be focused on staying warm – and collecting road trip stories from you! Please hit the comments button and tell me about a road trip you’ve taken – it can be your last one, favorite one, or worst one, as long as you share!
The church where the ceremony was held had this really interesting aperture.
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More importantly, the wedding was gorgeous and elegant, and two friends of ours are now starting a trip of their own, including a Jamaica honeymoon, and hopefully visits back and forth from anywhere we all end up. I borrowed these pictures from my boyfriend and date for the event, Steven.
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The weather was in the mid to upper 50’s there (and in the upper 90’s to 100’s when we got back to Phoenix!), the Wichita wind was high, the Rockies were stunning as always.
We stayed at the Hotel at Old Town, which already has an impressive website (including virtual tours, slideshows, etc.), to I’m going to link you there and just show you my favorite detail, as well as a clue to how it’s made:
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Finally, mad props to United. Yes, I may still complain about the delay and Denver’s ad crazy WiFi. But I’m a pilot’s daughter, and a good preflight is ESSENTIAL. Our pilots on Sunday caught a problem on the ground, while the flight crew kept us informed and the airline set us up with a new plane and got us on our way again. Here’s to safety checks, hydraulic pumps, and to making it home, safe.
(extra credit: please identify which of the photos below are from Denver area and which from Wichita…)
And that’s it for the moment – Mexico and Wichita in the same week, and the meantime, everything here kept going, full steam, so I’m back to going full blast in Phoenix…
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Travel is not limited to the new & exciting – sometimes it’s returning to a place that’s familiar. As the White Stripes song says, I’m going to Wichita this weekend, for a wedding.
I’ve had family here all my life, and some of my earliest memories are of playing in my Grandma’s garden and my Grandpa’s workshop, and their little blue house on Sheridan. Time’s passed, many of us are in new places, and the paint has faded and peeled. Still the city itself doesn’t seem to change significantly, a plains city riding the business winds of the airlines providing much of Wichita’s industry base.
Anyway not so many picture/story opportunities yet, mostly running around with flights and rental cars and hotels and trying to get assignments and grading done in between, but I’ll give you what I’ve got so far, from the airport…
I think of process pictures as pictures that show how something is done or made, often everyday things, like Science Channel’s “How It’s Made.” They show the how, but also sometime the why, of everything from daily activities to events. They’re useful to people who just want to know how things are done, but also to people who want to learn a new skill (in my case, painting and building a patio!) or a new technique (for me, grilling kabob style).
The examples in this post are at the exceptionally NOT exotic location of my old house, but the practice became important. Documenting what we were working on there, I realized the importance of documenting these same kinds of things while traveling, which I’ll go into with the next post.
It can be as simple as before and after pictures, like these…
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Or if you’re lucky enough to have the luxury of time, it can be a set of pictures built up over months. Here are the before pictures…
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The during pictures…
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And the after pictures…
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Coming up in the next post: process pictures from trips.
The Air is Full of Spices 