#1 The Walk

Because in my experience even years have been happy years, I think this will be the very first time I document the best thing that happens every day of my ho-hum, sometimes magical, most times stressed out life. I feel sure no one will be reading this except maybe my husband Ben from time to time, but I want to document at least one year of our life for posterity. At least, the moments of it that I care to remember.

Today, mama and I took a long walk over the historic district of our city, Laurel. Ben and I live not very far from 5th and 6th avenues, and in the early months of our relationship, we would take these amazing walks in the springtime. Then, it smelled like sweet olive (if you’ve never smelled this fragrant bloom, you’ve missed out on one of the best things about a Mississippi springtime) and we would walk and walk and talk about our plans for our future life together. We planned our careers as married people (he a lawyer, me an artist… as it turns out, he is a youth minister and I am actually an entrepreneur/stationer/designer/artist), we talked about which homes we would someday buy, what we might name the fictional children we would have.

It’s always been a fascinating part of our town to me, so I was excited to show my mom (my parents live in the country) our favorite walking path, our favorite homes. Today you could not smell the sweet olive, just bitter cold blasts of wind with that nothing smell of winter, but taking that walk I could feel the sunshiney springtime that’s coming right around the corner. This walk was important to me simply because it was a new experience for my mom to see all these places she’s been driving past her whole life are really special and fascinating on foot. Let me show you what I love about Laurel:(mural designed by me)

(Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, photo by Paul Myrick)

(our dream home, aptly named Sweet Olive)

For today, I’m signing off. Cheers to the new year!