You've Come a Long Way.....

I recently reconnected via Facebook with a friend from childhood who commented, after viewing some of my photos on Facebook, that I had come a long way for a girl from Landrum. And that comment started me thinking. Although I now live less than a hundred miles from the town where I grew up, those years in Landrum seem lifetimes away. I guess it is true that I have come a long way!



Of course it's true that I have journeyed many, many miles from my upstate South Carolina home. And in the journeying, have been places I used to only dream of! As a little girl, I spent many hours in our little town library.....beginning with the Bookmobile that my mother used to take me to and then progressing to our tiny little town library that opened some years later. That library was open two days a week, and I was there every time......getting more books for my Granddaddy who lived with us (he only wanted westerns or mysteries and would complain loudly if I made the mistake of bringing home a book he had already read!!) and stocking up on biographies and Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and the Bobbsey Twins, among other things, for myself. I probably read every book in that library at least once! And as I would read about faraway places, I would dream of the day.....some day......that I would be able to visit those places.


Meanwhile, Daddy's cousin Anne, who was a professor of Engish at Winthrop University (then it was Winthrop College, which is also my alma mater), would invite me to visit her during summer terms and would drop me off in the Children's Section of the college library while she taught. More books!! I was in heaven!! And more dreaming of places I hoped one day to visit! Anne would also occasionally travel to Europe during her summer vacations and would bring back souvenirs.....I had an Eiffel Tower and a Venetian gondola on my charm bracelet! And she would bring more books!!


Even as I was reading of all those faraway places and concocting all sorts of scenarios that would get me there, I don't know that I ever really believed I would actually travel like that. I think that somewhere deep inside, I knew that I was just dreaming.....that a shy little bookworm like me would never really get to visit all those places. But still I dreamed.

And then I grew up.....and got married, in what I still think was the most beautiful wedding ever, to a wonderful man. He was from "the big city" (Columbia, the capital city of our state) and we moved to the suburbs of the big city. I continued reading, taught high school English, and fully expected that we would live in Columbia forever. We used to watch "The Love Boat" on TV and dream together of the day we would take a cruise and I thought maybe that would be the way my travel dreams would be fulfilled.

But we didn't stay in Columbia forever. We have moved......a LOT!! My sweet husband, whose educational background is civil engineering and who worked in an architectural firm when we first married, took a job as a "building and grounds manager" for a large insurance company in the late '70s, following massive layoffs at the architectural firm. Part of that job involved being responsible for all the company's telephone equipment, which led him in 1984 to accept a position with an interconnect phone company in Charlotte, NC. Turns out he's really good at this telecommunications stuff, which has led to many other job offers that we couldn't refuse, which is how we've done all this moving around the country. He's very well-respected and sought after in the low-voltage data industry, which makes me very proud of him.


All the moving around has had its challenges. It's not easy to uproot your family, say good-bye to friends and your comfort zone and start over. But it really has been a wonderful life, in spite of the challenges! We have met so many wonderful people, made dear friends in so many parts of the country, and one of the great benefits has been the fulfillment of so many of my travel dreams!

We've experienced so much of the beauty and diversity that is the USA......from our native South Carolina to the rugged Rocky Mountains of Colorado, then to the shoreline of Connecticut (which I still believe is one of the most beautiful places on earth in the fall!), on to the "tundra" of Minnesota, to the sunshine of Florida, and now back almost full circle to the mountains of North Carolina just a short distance from where I grew up. Just in the moving around, we have journeyed many miles......."come a long way."

And in the journeying, we have visited so many of the places I once only dreamed of visiting.....and although I have never ridden (yet) in a Venetian gondola, I have been to the top of the Eiffel Tower! Paris is on my list of favorite cities.......along with London, Edinburgh, York, Montreal, Quebec City, Sydney, Melbourne, Zurich......I've come a long way!

Many of these cities I would love to visit again....and again and again. And I still have cities I would love to see.....quite a long list actually. I've come a long way, but I'm not done yet!