I have been yearning to blog all weekend, but a suitable topic has continually evaded me. I find that sooo frustrating. I could talk about this vision I had. Seriously, I was in yoga last week and during the last part where we are in corpse pose, I had a flash of me in a foreign country working. That got me thinking...hmmmm-what would it be like to travel abroad and work there for a year? I love to travel. The gypsy spirit is genetic. My mom was never really into settling down even though we did not move around a lot as a child. A single mom with 5 kids would definitely put a damper on that, but she constantly yearned to travel and we did a lot of that.

Mom would take all of us (except my older brother) on a vacation each year. We would go to Cherokee, NC or Myrtle Beach, SC. It was always an adventure as we knew something would go wrong. One time, our "big mac" luggage holder on top of the car flew open and our stuff blew all over the road. We were able to retrieve it without anyone getting run over. I don't recall one camping trip where the tent did not leak--unfortunately, all of our trips involved a tent.

When we would go to Myrtle Beach, mom would take us to the outlets for our school clothes shopping. This was back when outlets=saving money. One time we bought so much stuff that we barely had room for all of us in the VW Rabbit we came in. We all had to sit on things--luggage, pillows, towels. I think we even strapped the cooler onto the bumper of that car.

Mom would pick out the dumpiest looking restaurant to eat at. She had a knack for finding great restaurants this way. One such treasure was Johnny Lockhart's in the Norfolk/Virgina Beach area. It was a little hole in the wall with great seafood. One time we went straight from the beach. We had not been there in years. We walked in and we were greeted by a maitre'd in tuxedo. It had gone from a dive to fine dining and we were out of place. Mom held her ground and our ragtag bunch was escorted past finely dressed diners into a private room by the kitchen. I think we had the best table in the place and the waiter loved how fun we were so we got great service.

Last night I dreamed that mom showed up on my doorstep. We laughed, we talked, we hugged. She looked healthy and happy and she was with my niece Carmen--the granddaughter she did not get to meet. I hated to wake up from that dream because it has been 7 years since I have seen mom alive and longer than that since I saw her that happy (if I ever did). Mom's legacy lives on in each of her kids because we all have that gypsy spirit and I believe I see glimpses of it in each of her two granddaughters as well.

Labels: Gypsy