Curiosity

I've written before about the fact that I was an Air Force brat so was granted a few travel opportunities that would never have come my way otherwise. These opportunities allowed me to develop a greater curiosity for the world and the ways that others live.

I was about 4 years old when we lived in North Carolina near Fayetteville. I can remember the soil in the yard was a reddish color and an ant hill. I think this memory is clear because my 2 year old sister once sat on the thing and got stung a few times. My mind also sees hills or bluffs with winding roads where crosses dot the sides of the road here and there. I seem to recall my mother and a friend talking about this one day, saying that each cross marked a site where someone had been killed in a car accident. I can also vividly see my father coming into the house after my youngest sister had been born. His words have always stayed with me, "It's another damned girl."

As a kindergartener, living in Duluth, MN on Lake Superior, I remember very little about the kids I went to school with, but I remember, very clearly, the great heaping piles of snow during the winter that I spent there. Open windows with the breeze filling the house with the scent of lilacs in bloom is another memory that is revived occasionally. I also recall huge boats and a draw bridge where we'd wait for the boats to pass so we could drive on to wherever we were going.

When I was 11 we lived in Brandywine, MD where there were lots and lots of pine trees and sandy soil. A day trip in to see Washington D.C. impressed me very much until we drove through parts of the city away from the Capital building and monuments and I saw tacky buildings with broken windows and trash in the streets wherever I looked. I guess that was my first experience with slums. My memories of Chesapeake Bay include the color green that I became after spending the night on a cabin cruiser.

I have written of living in England before in my blog so I'll save other memories of that for another time.

I write of these things this morning to try to explain my enjoyment of seeing photos and reading about all the places that my blog friends live and visit. A geography class never prepares you for the wonderful things that you can see if the opportunity presents itself.