One of the newest items on my "Miller Bucket List" has been the following~
"To get over my fear of flying and make a journey to New York City to visit my niece, Jessica."
According to the calendar, and it's NOT the Mayan one by the way, I've got about 3 months ahead of me in which to prepare myself. So what I'm saying is, here goes nothing :) because during the last week in March, that's just what I intend to do.
I have lived my entire 57 years of being in the very same little spot on the earth, Reno County, Kansas. I never left here, not for college or marriage, not after getting divorced, heck hardly even for trips and vacations. As the 6th kid out of seven who was born into a Kansas farming family, I guess I've never felt the need to look any further than the land where I came from in the first place. So far, that's worked out pretty well for me, well at least until this crazy "bucket list" idea was conceived.
Last May at the end of the school term, I took a 4,000 mile round trip journey to fulfill the #1 item on my bucket list, "To travel to Maine and see a lighthouse for the very first time." On my way there, I travelled through the "Empire State", New York, and in the southern tier of counties I found the most beautiful village named Owego and it was there that I spent a day and night. I found it to be the most enchanting of places, a "fairy tale" kind of place and when I left in the early morning darkness of May 29th, I vowed that one day I would come back again. As it turns out, that special day will be sometime during the last week of March.
Come the spring time when I visit Owego, I will hope to bring along a sample of what life is like in Kansas for some very special New York kids at St. Patrick School. Some of their students have become pen pals with some of our students here at my home school, Lincoln Elementary. I look forward to meeting them and their teachers in person and perhaps even getting to spend part of the day with them in class. While I'm in the village, I want to walk down the bridge that spans the Susquehanna River as you enter Owego, to go back to the top of Cemetery Hill and look down upon the land below. My plan is to take more books for the children's reading section of Coburn Free Library and to spend some time within it, soaking up the ambiance of what a "true" library looks like and smells like. It's still up in the air if I will desire to see the infamous "dead man's curve". I can tell you this, Eddie Rabbit may well have "Loved a Rainy Night", but I've heard too many spooky stories about what happens on rainy nights when you visit THAT famous Owego landmark. It will probably have to be a "let's don't and say that we did" kind of moment.
And then, well then there's New York City. When my dear niece, Jessica Scott, left her home in Kansas and headed to the Northeast after graduation from KU, I thought she was perhaps "crazy". Why on earth would anyone want to leave the quiet, peaceful and serene setting of life in the Midwest and call the hustling/bustling home of nearly 9,000,000 people their OWN new home? But Jessica did and she loves it there, she thrives there. For quite a while she has encouraged me to try to come and visit and every time she has mentioned it, I've had a gazillion different excuses why it would not be a good thing for her frail and elderly Aunt Peggy, LOL, to do so. And now, well now I think I have run out of excuses. So before the next thing that I run out of in this life is "time", I might just as well make the journey to the "city" as well as the journey to the "village".
There's a lot to accomplish between now and the last week of March and fortunately for me, I am not traveling there alone. My nearly 22-year old daughter, Ursela Hemman, will be making the trip with me. She's well experienced in travel and I've left most of the transportation arrangements up to her to make the decisions on. My Ursela is "fearless" and she enjoys the challenge of travelling to new places and meeting new people. She did NOT get that character trait from her mother, a statement of fact that you can "take to the bank".
There's much I would desire to see there and perhaps some of you who have made the journey before can suggest some of your favourite places to check out. From riding the city's subway system to standing on the sacred spot called "Ground Zero" and everything else in between, I'm pretty sure it will be a culture shock to this school teacher from the Midwest. And even though the whole prospect of it all is pretty dang scary to me at this moment in time, I know that once I get on that plane and actually go, I'll find out that I really haven't had any need to fear about flying OR visiting the busy metropolis endearingly known as the "Big Apple". When I return, there will be stories aplenty to tell.
Well, day is done and night time has fallen. My hope is that all of you have had a good day, that some how you have been blessed in this life, for I know that I have been. The Kansas forecast is for some precipitation to show up in the next 24 hours. Will we see snow? That's anyone's guess I suppose. Living here through more than two years of dry conditions, we shall take whatever we can get, whenever we can get it. And even in the littlest, most insignificant of things we do give thanks.
Good night friends and family!
If a person could ever "fall in love" with the front door of a church, well this would be the one. The entrance to the First Presbyterian Union Church of Owego.
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