Inside My Head, I Must be Longing for a Trip to Western Kansas

And yet another week gone by... this one has not felt as leisurely, however. It's been rather full... and it's not over yet. I'm taking my sharpshooting kid to a match in Holton today. I plan to make a stop in Topeka. We'll call it a bit of mother/daughter time. I'm looking forward to the road trip with one. Anytime there is an opportunity to spend time with one as apposed to three, I learn all sorts of new stuff I hadn't managed to pick up on hanging out with them as a group.

As well as busy, it's been a dream-filled week. I think every night has sent me traveling west. Nothing specific about the dreams except the location -- grandma's old house which we lived in when we returned to Kansas some fourteen years ago. Sometimes it's remodeled the way it was when we lived there. Sometimes it's the same as it was when I was a child, and Grandma is there, and my mother is there, and my three kids are there and sometimes other kids that I don't know. Sometimes it's Grandma's house on the outside, but the inside is a maze of rooms and places I do not know.  The lilacs are still tall and line the drive between Grandma's house and the place my folks live. In my dreams, I've stood at the front door to Grandma's house and looked toward the house I grew up in, but I've not ventured there, because inside Grandma's house it's just bustling and busy and there are so many things to attend to it seems I can barely keep up.

At the track at the gym on Friday, I found myself drawn west again. I've often fought the general monotony of walking round and round on the indoor walking track, but I've had success, of late, with clearing my mind and making it something of a meditative, as well as physical practice. Somewhere among the endless loops I found my feet covered in dust as I pictured myself, mile-wise, in western Kansas. The road that runs east/west from the house I grew up in (right next door to Grandma's house) is so familiar to me after 25 some years of walking, that I know mile-by-mile where I would be if I were walking there instead of at the track.

Between the birth of Middle Munchkin and Munchkin Boy I traveled that road on foot near-daily, logging 5 miles most mornings through the spring and summer. Many mornings I started in the dark, taking advantage of hubby's getting-ready for work routine to make the trek alone. On others, I pushed the girls in a big shade covered buggy meant to attach to a bicycle. Either way, I was never lonely on that road.

It was the road my cousins and I would travel in grade school as we "ran away" from civilization. On horseback, I shared that road with my mom, my friend Mandy, and the various friends who would come out for a day to stay for a day in the country. It was the road that led to the old Amish cemetery that we would sometimes travel to by bike. When I learned to drive, it was the road, away from home, I first drove solo on.

At the gym, there is a stationary bike program where, if you sign in, you can ride alongside ghosts of yourself from previous rides. I wonder if the person who had the idea of placing ghosts in the rides had a lonely country road in their past that was owned by no one and traveled by few. Those ghosts don't hold the same allure as my western Kansas road. Sometimes they are good for a challenge to race against, but they don't talk and tell me stories like those ghosts on that road out west.