This weekend we took a quick overnight to Memphis, as my Company was throwing a summer party for our employees and their families and it meant a lot to me to be there for that. I challenged myself to use this opportunity to try and remember how to write about life experiences. For the last 5 years, I’d forgotten how to do some things that used to be important to me, and blogging about my life, whether meaningful or routine, was something I did often and it gave me a lot of purpose. My friend Azeem recently suggested that maybe it wasn’t that I had forgotten, but simply a matter of time management – having a kid and adapting to the constant fluidity of life thereafter is difficult and lopsided. Honestly, that thought had never occurred to me, and I just assumed something had broken in me, so here I am, testing that theory. (Thanks for the nudge, Azeem!)
Actually, I have another theory too. When I started this site…however long ago that was (over ten years?) I did it simply for me. I wanted a platform to save my thoughts and memories, and have a neutral sounding board as I figured early adulthood out. But overtime, people started to really read what I put out there, and offer feedback, and even comment on stretches of inactivity, curious about what I was writing about next and “Do you still blog??”. And while I love that this place connected with others, I struggled with an inner dialogue that got in my way of writing because rather than just…going for it because I wanted to, I stifled in a place of indecision. “This topic is dumb, people don’t want to hear me write about this, who am I to comment on…fill in the blank. This feels too self-serving.” And then indecision turned into true self-deprication and I just decided that my experiences would remain my experiences, lived in the moment and hopefully somewhat committed to my memory. And then layer on the child thing, and the depression that followed, this space became a fragmented graveyard of my survival and come back, reduced to some very brief and fleeting thoughts and poetry that I tried to cobble together to communicate where I was and what was taking up most of the headspace at any given time.
Okay, enough conspiracy theories, let’s write about Memphis.
Our adventure begins with surprising Ellie at lunch with a Happy Meal on Friday afternoon. There is no greater flex in Kindergarten than your parents bringing in outside food and sitting with you on a stage overlooking your peers than this (so I’ve learned). We wave, we holler at friends, we hug teachers, we are basically royalty for a 25 minute adrenaline binge. Afterwards, we check Ellie out to start the weekend!
The plan is to arrive in Memphis early evening, check into the historic Peabody Hotel, and then make our way to the Redbirds minor league baseball game to join my co-workers and their families. Turner has rented out a large swanky event space overlooking the field to serve as our entertainment for the evening. On top of that, the kiddos were invited down to the field to high five the players as they run onto the field after the first pitch. Rob enjoyed this significantly more than Ellie it turns out. Ellie mainly used this time to write words in the dirt, and picked up and played with discarded sunflower seeds that had been chewed up and spit out by the players in past games. Yum!
The Peabody Memphis opened in 1869 and is incredibly ornate, towering over many of the buildings in downtown in both height and width. The allure of the Peabody, outside of its sheer size, are the ducks. The story goes, back in the 1930s the GM of the hotel and his buddy came back from a hunting trip still drunk and thought it would be hilarious to put some of their live duck decoys in the hotel lobby fountain. Turns out, everyone loves animals in places they shouldn’t be, so the ducks stayed and overtime, they were trained to perform a little march in and out of the fountain. The hotel still participates in the duck march twice a day, and it’s all the rage to gather around and watch it. Also, if you love ducks and gift shops, this place is the mecca, as anything you could possibly want, but with ducks, can be found here.
Our room was on the 9th floor, in a corner, and directly overlooked the ball park! We arrived too late to see the ducks at 5pm, and so we set our things down, and then headed back down to the ball field.
In an apples to apples comparison of the Redbirds experience to what we have back home with the Trash Pandas, Huntsville definitely has something special! The Friday night game here was almost empty, despite it being a beautiful evening to enjoy baseball. Not sure if this was ordinary for home games or not, but a stark contrast to our experience at Trash Panda games at home. Never the less, we had a wonderful time partying with my Turner people and then taking Ellie down to one of the grassy hills so she could roll up and down them and dig in the dirt. (Grateful our hotel room had a bathtub).
The next morning, we ventured to a place across the street called King and Union for some breakfast fuel. Our plan was to wait around to see the ducks march at 11am, but Ellie didn’t seem to care to do that, and rather than kill time, we checked out around 10 and made our way to the zoo. We did take a few minutes to go up to the top floor and walk out onto the roof. The ducks evidently live here between marching, but we couldn’t find them. It’s weird how enamored everyone becomes about ducks all of a sudden in this place, myself included. Why yes I DO need these duck socks that politely ask “What the duck?”
The day was hot, the Memphis Zoo was not crowded, and the animals were active and visible. Honestly, not much more you can hope for. We fed giraffes, saw some cool animals, and managed to escape with only spending 15 bucks at the gift shop, a true September miracle. A mega plus (and I wish I had known this prior to our trip) is that the Memphis zoo has a few places built in for kids to get wet (splash pads and full blown water park/fountain area). While we didn’t have a bathing suit (should have bought the duck one back at the gift shop I guess), Ellie still managed to have fun and luckily we had an outfit change handy. Next time we visit, I’ll be better prepared for this, because an awesome way to end a day of walking around at a zoo full of smells and sunshine is letting your kid play in the water while you sit in the shade on a bench and relax.
We found a close lunch spot right outsize the zoo called Cafe Eclectic, which a co-worker had recommended to me the night before. A quaint place with a lot of character, we had a late lunch, got some to-go coffees, and then headed back east while Ellie promptly fell asleep, Weekend at Bernie’s style. I didn’t get many photos of our lunch experience – and herein lies a frustrating challenge that I realized has perpetuated my lack of energy to document experiences the last many years – being thoughtful about taking photos, capturing the experience in a certain way, that takes extra time. It’s hard to weave that in when you have a 5 year old. Before Ellie, I would have taken more care to frame the food photos a certain way, make sure to get pictures of the inside and outside vibe to better highlight the establishment, and probably add in a cute selfie or artsy something for good measure. I’m not wholly satisfied with this new way of documenting experiences, but I’m endeavoring to be open minded and patient with myself. So behold, two very uninspiring photos of our lunch, dead noon view.
In one particular area of the zoo there were several native american engravings in the stone walls. This one felt poignant, and reminded me of the Theory of Reciprocity – that you get what you give, and that there is inherently a homeostatic and cyclical rhythm to energy. And if we want a certain energy to move toward us, we have to be willing to offer that up and back out. And so I’d like to think that, with this time spent sharing all of this here, in my little online space, that I’m offering up the energy that I want to come around back to me. Even if it looks different than it once did, and even if it’s not perfect. Even if it just exists as it honestly is, a window into one weekend in September where I had everything that means anything at all to me, right in my hands.
The Wayfaring Friend 