Driven by Love
Moments with family seem surreal these days. Watching my children fall in love with people who love them most of all is completely heartwarming. We sew seeds into people with the time spent with them. Walking along New Orleans streets, capturing smiling and events with the mutineer and my darling terrorist keeps me occupied throughout the day.
The loves of my life are always family and friends who have supported and loved us throughout our seasons and changes. Sometimes, I think about long conversations with my husband as we ride through rural Louisiana towns to go and visit my mother. The car is hot like hell, but windows are open blowing cooler temperatures directly into our faces. During a long stretch of highway while discussing a myriad of topics my lover and I exhaust every point we’ve made until we childishly start to pick on each other’s points of view. Therapy sessions in and of itself are long car rides with your significant other.
Pictures of our years together replay before me on the open road. We ride in silence until each of us realize that we are both stupidly creating chaos just to make up with one another. Passion we subconsciously create in order to continue to chase each other. All and all becoming the couple that rather enjoys fussing with one another.
I think heavily on the great times I have had with my family on the open road ahead of me. Laughter bellows in front of my memories. Sitting around playing cards with my side of the family. We take our spades games entirely too seriously. We talk loud to one another and laugh even harder at jokes we have heard for the millionth time. We aren’t phone people but the attention you give and receive at a family gathering at my home is like leaving off a line of a stanza in a poem that could go on forever. We humor each other for days. Staying up late, telling stories and catching each other up on the latest comedic moment of our lives. If life has taught our family anything it is that the laughter you spend with family can only be understood by people who’ve stopped and realize the similarities within the stories, we tell further reinforce the notion that we are different versions of fruit from the same tree. We are all trying to thrive in our versions of what we can contribute to the legacy of our lineage with the time God grants us on the earth. Humankind needs the last version of itself to perfect the next version of the earth’s inhabitants. Indeed, people need people and I need them to remind me of who I think that I am. I love them for reminding me that I am all things they think and more.
Daydreams drag along the countryside. Cane and corn stalks towering over the highway in anticipation of harvest to come. The music changes and reminds me of the greenest of Gucci suits during awesome vacations to Chicago. Summer time in Chicago always hails with the weather being stifling during the day and romantically cool during summer nights. Gummy bears drowned in distilled spirits; the energy of the evening began to fade. All that was left were the memories we shared together. Children chased each other and played baseball. Zoo excursions where peacocks roamed and cageless monkeys toppled about our heads. The vacation ended in nostalgia. Tours down memory lane scattered ahead and we all grappled at our remaining tender moments. Hugs and whispers of seeing each other soon become bittersweet because the love we have for each other tugs at our heart. It isn’t good bye, we remind ourselves while departing. It is ‘see you soon’.
Our loved ones speak life into us when we arrive and in departing. They are seeing the words they speak over our family coming to fruition and we strive to make them proud of us. Our time together is a constant reminder that we are listening. Carrying your torch and traditions of patience, love, and other values that come with becoming a great human being has taken root and we want to make you proud. No seed you have sewn has gone in vain. We are trying. We are honoring you by living life as God fearing working people and we won’t ever forget the sacrifices you have made to sew life into us.
Tears again remind us that it is see you later. Joyful tears sometimes make the words see you later not soon enough. Embracing one last time before leaving the nest to fend for ourselves in the world of disillusions. We have so much to prove to you and so little moments to share it with you.
I hear a train blow and there we are. Bunkie, Louisiana. We meet again. Family and much needed memories await us for the hours ahead.
