Healing in Travels - Day 1

Friday, July 14, 2023

Friday consisted of driving by every building I could think of including my high school, the church we were married in, old places of employment, where I got my first speeding ticket, where I got my second speeding ticket, the college where my dad taught and homes of high school friends.

It was strange to see how little things had changed, then I remembered that it really hadn’t been that long since I was there. You have to remember that I only lived there from 8th to 12th grade before going to college, coming back only 1 summer.

More memories were made there with MY kids going to visit their grandparents so I drove by parks we used to go to and, of course, Riverbanks Zoo (aka Grandma’s Zoo).

I finally got the nerve to drive by the house, and that’s exactly what I did. I drove by. Four times. I paused to take a picture, and then I went to the end of the road, opened the door, and threw up.

I drove to the hotel then having decided I had enough for one day. Crazy side note: when I went into the Marriott, I asked the clerk if the hotel used to be a Holiday Inn. Indeed, it had and was exactly the place where our wedding reception was on August 5, 1989.

After downloading the Uber app the night before and getting a quick tutorial from Will, I went to The Blue Marlin for dinner. Highly recommend if you are ever in Columbia.

As I feel asleep that night, I smiled thinking if my dad were not already dead, he would have had a heart attack seeing his beautifully hand-stained front door painted bright blue.