Seeing with New Eyes
Day 18 of 31: 200 Words-a-Day Challenge
Are you playing along, writing with me each day? Just 200 words, that’s all! Even if you haven’t started yet… begin now!
The way it works: I give you a micro-essay, my 200 words, followed by a prompt. You share in the comments or via Notes, indicating which prompt you’re responding to (or restacking the prompt… thank you!).
Use the previous and next buttons to navigate through the posts if you missed previous days or check out the prompt directory.
Seeing with New Eyes
When I return in the summer to the area of North Carolina where I grew up, the feeling of being here always takes me by surprise. Always.
There are several reasons for this.
First, I live in Florida now where breathing the summer air feels like snorting milk gravy. So, I’m always a bit startled when I go outside here and the summertime mountain air, even in bright daylight, is light and refreshing on my skin and in my nose.
Second, even though this area is my childhood home, I never spent summers here. As soon as the final bell rang on the last day of the school year, my bags were packed and I was off to Tennessee to visit my paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, and favorite cousins. It was always a two-week visit… except that once when cousin Danny locked me away in a chifforobe—that’s an armoire to you Northerners—so my mother couldn’t take me away; he didn’t know there was no key.
The remainder of each summer I spent with my mother in Atlanta, and on short trips to visit her family. So none of my summers from first to twelfth grade, nor after I went off to college, were spent in the parts of Western North Carolina I called home.
I never thought about this—at all—until just a few years ago. My dad and I were strolling the Oconaluftee River Trail near Cherokee. Taking in the beauty of the abundant foliage, the soft rushing sounds of the trout-filled river, I was struck with such awe I had to stop. I had to compose myself as I took it all in. In that moment, I was gobsmacked by the realization that even though I acknowledge this area as my homeland, I’d never been here in early summer.
For the rest of that visit, I looked at everything through new eyes. It was as if more than just the season was new to me. It all felt fresh and exciting.
Now, when I come home this time of year, it takes only the feel of the summer mountain air flowing into my body to bring back that river trail feeling, the awe and gratitude for being from this land, from this magnificent place.
Your Prompt / Day 18 of 31
Is there something about your childhood that, looking back, seems obvious now, but that you never realized until you were grown? What did that realization feel like to you? Is there something in your life now that you could look back on with new eyes?... OR...
Write about 'home' and what that word means to you, what home feels like (or could feel like), whether the meaning has changed in your life.
Please share what you write by posting into the comments or via Notes. And to comment on others’ shared writing: (1) be kind, (2) don’t critique unless explicitly requested, (3) tell the writer what in their writing resonated with you, made you think differently, or was an ‘aha’ for you.
Thanks for joining me in this challenge! Please invite your friends.