evoking emotion
Sometimes we all have feelings of disconnect or loneliness. When this happens, for me at least, my instinct is to emotionally fill that need with things that force either nostalgia or creativity.
Some might understand this idea better when they envision holding a warm cup of tea with both hands and knees pulled to the chest on a cold day. It brings you back to center, calms you and makes you connect with a calmer more grateful you.
The images below are my cup of tea.
EXPECT THE EXPECTED
If you have ever driven a road, the same road, over and over again. Then you know what to expect.
Even the turns you know by heart, each one getting you closer and closer to your well know destination.
And so, there’s something exciting in the expected. There’s something soothing in the known. The way you know what gas stations have the best coffee and cleanest bathrooms even state after state from home.
Growing up we always stopped at LOVES on the way to Phoenix. This was on the way to see my mom’s mother. And my sister and I would get a velvet poster that was for coloring on the road. I still wonder what happened to all those.
I remember how my uncles would drive through the night every year at least one night because they wanted to eventually get to California in 2 days.
So here I am over two decades later driving to see my mom and realizing the comfort of seeing the expected. The reassurance of knowing what’s to come. The feeling of home is right around this corner.
Above is a snapshot of the drive-in theatre outside of town that my sister and I always look forward to seeing each summer as we drive to my mom’s. And there’s something just as beautiful about it in winter.
I hope that I can keep making this drive for as long as possible.
It reminds me of comfort and how there’s peace in the expected even when those things aren’t people but just places.
Here are some of my favorite things that represent so much more to me than just a “thing”.
PLACES
My dad always loved antique shops and junk stores. I loved them too. I still go to the same ones ever couple days or weeks just to see what I can find. I wonder sometimes if that was my dads “cup of tea” or way to reconnect.
one word : boardwalk
where most of my sibling childhood memories were made.
years of horse race game, thrashers fries with extra vinegar and photobooth strips of me and my dearest friends and family acting like goofs.
it never gets old. at 40 we still go together and act like kids all week.
The grocery store parking lot I have been going to for 20 years.
The place I go alone the most because it’s almost always last minute.
This place has seen me in many stages of life.
my first international trip with my sister was to Portugal. we were both so curious how it took us so long to travel internationally together since we have done it numerous times with other people. Tip: rent the scooter period.