Cherries?

It's not a new or surprising fact that being extremely tired / stressed makes one's mind play games.

Enter exhibit A, left. I did a poor job of taking the picture but one might notice a row of trees with pink blossoms in the foreground. The row is actually parallel to the front of my apartment building.

When I stepped outside for class Thursday, the trees were in full bloom. Overnight (or in the past few days since I tend to be oblivious) they'd exploded into pink blossoms eerily reminiscent of the cherry trees in DC every year during the cherry blossom festival.

My mom used to take us downtown every year during spring break (the week after Easter) to see the blossoms. The night before, she'd pack a picnic lunch (always hamburgers and chips and a fruit and cookies). We'd get up early and drive to a METRO station and ride into DC with the morning commuters. When we finally got off at the stop downtown (I don't remember which one) my brother and I would run around, picking up the petals and throwing them into the air. As I recall, there were actually a lot more white ones than pink ones, so we'd pretend that the white ones were snow. Then she'd walk us around the mall and we'd look at some of the monuments. One year we were down there was the year that Fresca made that comeback, and there were vendors all over handing out free samples of it. We carried back as much as we could, just because it was free.

Every year we tried to see something slightly different than we'd seen the year before. The only distinct memory of seeing a particular monument I have is from when we saw the Washington Monument. I think we got tickets beforehand, or something, and then stood in line for awhile. I was terrified of riding an elevator up that high (what if we got STUCK?!?!) but I survived the perilous journey and the vew at the top was...incredible.

At the end of the day, we'd ride the METRO home (considering outselves to be METRO veterans by that point), eat dinner, and collapse exhausted into our beds.

Those were really, really good days. As far as things go, my childhood was pretty awesome. It seemed like my family was always off on some adventure or another. If it wasn't road trips during the summer, it was bike rides on the weekends during the fall and spring, or small weekend day trips to visit Civil War battlefields, or to one of the museums in DC, or picking fruit at a local (or not so local) orchard, or making pies and desserts from fruit we'd picked, or any number of other things my parents could dream up. There was so much that we just experienced, that no amount of reading or watching or imagining could have simulated. There was so much that we lived - there's so much more that I want to do.

It wasn't until late middle school/early high school that I realized that when my family was out having adventures on the weekend was when other people were doing all the "normal" things that I got made fun of for not doing (you know, buying clothes at Abercrombie and Fitch and the GAP, playing soccer and lacrosse, going to the movies, watching TV, etc). I'm not saying that there's anything inherently wrong with any of that - but I wouldn't have traded my life for one of theirs. I mean it was really hard to get made fun of, and to feel like I was lacking just because my family didn't really behave like other families, but whenever I tried any of the "other stuff" I was just bored. (I still don't have much patience for shopping, as much as I've tried and tried and tried to be into it.) Actually I would have liked to learn to play lacrosse but by the time I was tossed into it in PhysEd and was just getting knocked around by WASP girls who'd been playing more or less since they could walk...not so hot on it.

Anyways. When I was stumbling out the door for my 10:30 class (I know, I can't complain :-P) and saw the trees, I forgot where I was. I remember thinking "Oooh. The blossoms...I'm home!" and just feeling this incredible relief and weight lift off of my shoulders. A split second later, I realized that actually I was still in Pittsburgh. And I had to get to my circuits class. So off I went. A few steps down the driveway, I turned around and took a picture of the trees - not so I could have a picture of the "trees that resemble cherry trees in bloom" but so I'd remember to remember some really good days.