Taking Myself to a Happy Place

These are not new pictures -- in fact, they were taken quite a while back. However, there's a very good reason that I "cheated" with this today. In the midst of all the stress and uncertainty in my life, I've been thinking back to the place my family lived for three years when I was early on in the teenage process -- and where I still think I was the happiest I've ever been (current situation with wife and daughter notwithstanding). It was in an old farmhouse on property owned by some friends of our family -- a place where we could roam over and through 200 acres of fields and forest, where we could be isolated from the chaos of everyday life, and a place that generated some of my fondest memories.

I've been thinking a lot about that place lately -- wishing that I could still escape back there to recharge, and wishing that mydaughters might one day have a chance to know what it's like to live in the country while there is still "country" left in which to live. Part of me wishes I hadn't grown up and that I still lived in that house -- but on the flip side, part of me is still there, and it's still in me. I still have dreams about the house, and certain pieces of music always trigger memories of that place -- and even though when my sister and I went for a visit a few years back I found the house to be so much smaller, seeing it again made the memories that much bigger.

So while today's post is wordier and uses old photos, it shows where my mind and heart have been as I deal with the changes in my life.....