Soaking In The Words Of A Friend

I enjoyed an email conversation with a sister-friend in Nashville today. She mentioned how she wanted to get back to financial comfort to where she could “travel a couple times a year to revitalize mind and spirit.” I sat back and said, ahh yessss… It felt like cool water against my face. I want that as well for myself and to be able to enjoy it with my special one… I long for a little country breeze and a southern breakfast. I can smell the scent and vizualize a full orange moon at the end of the highway like I experienced in east Texas one year. I tried my best to drive all the way to it but my destination had come up so instead I watched the moon for a while from the front porch. A life I miss so much now and wish I could turn the hands of time back to experience but bring that special one with me and show her what complete freedom and peace feel like. Whew.. if my financial situation was right, I’d try to reclaim what I sold a few years ago.

Lastnight as I was cleaning up and getting rid of old paper work and paid off statements, I came across several interesting notes, letters and images that I printed on glossy computer paper over the last years times five, six or more... Each one of these things not only brought memories to the forefront of my mind but also had me traveling back in time. There was an old letter from a couple years ago that I never sent. It was a response to someone no longer in my life. It gave me a feeling of darkness and unforgiving, unnecessary strain. I then found a listing printed out by my father that showed the names and birth’s of my family beginning with Joe Rivers and Lucy Royal, my great grand parents. There was a little stain on the bottom of the page thanks to me reading this on a kitchen table one morning in Mt. Pleasant, Texas. The page was slightly soaking in this very thick syrup that I was using on my pancakes at the time. It’s something they call, Ribbon Cane Syrup. That stuff is so thick and sweet.. Sort of reminds me of Brer Rabbit but thicker and sweeter.. I had gotten it after one of my cousin’s told me to buy some in downtown Mt. Pleasant. I was using that on everything I ate during that trip. My grandmother was still alive during this time and I can remember pulling this page with the family info out of one of the bibles in my grandmother’s living room.

One of the images that I noticed on the glossy paper was a picture of me during my 1999 road trip to Texas and beyond. I was at a rest stop somewhere. The image took me back. I was a few or perhaps many pounds lighter than I am now.. *smile* I remember eating sandwiches that I had prepared for my trip. My sandwiches had been sitting in the hot backseat area, softening the cheese, bread getting moist and blending together with the miracle whip and tasting delicious! Whew.. I always washed it down with some Welch’s grape soda, which also kept me awake on the road because of the high sugar content and carbonation in that drink. Again, those were the days but I’m here now, aching to return to yesterday but I know I can’t. However, I will be back on the road soon and in the country because my soul is begging for that kind of rejuvenation, which is something you can never get in these cities where the closest thing to escaping the daily grind is a cruise thru the canyon in the wee hours of the morning after the nightowls have gone to bed and before the early risers greet the new morning…The window of time is short but worth every second when you can find it… Thank God for memories and for the cool breeze of good conversation that inspires my soul to hold onto what was and still is so very important...