Monday, May 4, 2015 9:02 am CDT

We are on the road again. This time traveling to Navarre Beach, Florida once again.  Without kids, with Tommy the Turtle in tow, we head out on another adventure. We both need this vacation more than we usually do. It has been 9 months since we last took a week off, and both of us have had quite an interesting spring, to say the least.

I started my new job as an attorney. Sweetie has had a lot going on at work with new  management giving him a lot more to do. The youngest child is graduating high school in about 3 weeks, going off to the Navy in September. We are finally settled in our house, and we sold our land and paid off all pour debts except our house. It’s been a great six months but also tiring. So we needed this break.

We decided to drive thigh southern Arkansas this time, taking the route that one typically takes going from Little Rock to New Orleans. Going through some of my our stomping ground in the Delta. Seeing the flatlands and farmlands, the tractors and center pivots, the plantation homes and the row houses, the grain silos and the baby corn. It all brings back good memories, finally. Makes me smile remembering the good times I had in the Delta.

Life and memories in the Delta were not always good. Yes, my son was born there. Yes, it was where I learned the art of being a true Southern lady, and yes, it was where I learned to have a voice and hardly any stage fright. It was also the site of abuse, poverty, and learning to put on a brave face and pretend everything was perfect, in true Southern lady fashion. It’s where I learned to love Southern Living, where I came to understand that the Delta is growing group 7, and where a German community with ducks and rice is its own little spot on the Earth. It wasn’t all bad, but it certainly wasn’t all great, either. Like much of life, it had its good and bad.

Today driving through, I find that my writings and ramblings have helped me to overcome some of that. I find that recent decisions, to quit the high-paying long-term job I loathed to do something I’d only dreamed of, to sell our land and buy a home on the far side of town instead of building, to keep my 10-year old car instead of buying something new, to pay off our debts do we have less money going pout every month, and to learn to relax after it was all done. As a friend of mine once said, don’t reach all your goals at one time for then you won’t have anything left to accomplish. I agree. I still have many goals left to accomplish. I just feel like I had to get these out of the way be for I could do the others.

Today, driving through the Delta, I found myself smiling at only the good memories. The smell of Riceland in the fall; the evenly spaced crop rows orderly and symmetrical, somehow comforting in their stillness; the mud clods on the highway, dropped from a tractor after plowing a field; the tractors themselves, slow-moving yet steady in their paces, the sun-stained faces of the farmers, eager to see the results of their labor during this hot summer to come; and, the thousands of power poles, all along the highway.

I have had a good life. A great life in some respects. I have traveled a lot. I have lived so any different adventures by not choosing one single career. I have lived and loved and finally found happiness.