We Regret What We Don't Do

The two day trip to Iowa was accomplished in the only way Juli and I know how to do things together – with frivolity, odd-ball antics, and one minor hissy fit. Things started to get really interesting about 6 hours into the trip when we were half-way across New Mexico, and I threw the entire, giant-sized atlas out the window because I discovered a live scorpion inside. We never did buy another map to get us where we were going. We went on instinct alone (and a lot of dumb luck), and after adventures on two-lane highways through Hooker, Oklahoma, a night in Liberal, Kansas, (quite the tourist attraction), and a liquid lunch somewhere in Nebraska, we finally arrived. My 1986 Pontiac LE 6000 bomb of a car pulled up in front of a farmhouse in the dark of the night, and my live-in life with my husband began.

Six years of learning, six years of wide open spaces, yet it is not enough. We are saying good-bye to a place that did nothing but give back to us. The mountains are ahead of us and our destination a constant west. What else lies ahead? My only hope is that our learning is as great as from where we came, and our road always leads us home to each other.

-The above is for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop, that I have written today, even though the link up doesn’t occur until Thursday. I’m wacky like that. Oh, well. (The prompt was to write about a “chapter in your life” with 5 sentences representing the beginning of the chapter, and 5 sentences to represent the end of the chapter.) I chose to write about the years that my husband and I lived in Iowa. I finished college in Arizona and drove out to Iowa in the fall of 1998. Six years later we moved to Colorado. Why? Because we could. So we did.

I actually have a picture of my friend behind the wheel on our drive out to Iowa. Check it out:

Every time my husband sees that picture, he laughs. He thinks we are strange to be able to have so much fun doing anything – including driving across the country to Iowa. But that’s what we do when we’re together. We know no other way but to do it big and fun. Love to you, dear friend.