If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, or have at least dived into my older posts, you know that New Years resolutions for 2020 and 2021 have been to finally see Amy after almost 5 years of life being too crazy to make it. 2020 didn’t work out for obvious travel restricting reasons. 2021 we had better luck.
Being with Amy is to have a cup of tea and talk books. It’s to tap deep into the well of creativity that has laid dormant for too long and find a wealth of ideas and inspiration. It’s finding adventure in every little excursion. It’s catching the infectious idea that all things are possible. It’s soaking in relationships and appreciating the people around you, whether it’s in old friends or new. It’s processing and sorting out the highs and lows of life with someone and walking away refreshed and able to tackle the day to day again.
We did have all sorts of adventures. One obvious and major highlight being that we did a wonderful walking tour of DC. Someday I will make it back to soak in the details of DC, but for now it was amazing just to walk the streets and see the grandness that is the capitol. We focused on seeing people more than seeing sights – having a delightful multi-hour lunch with Lydia at a restaurant called Teaism, whom neither of us has seen for nearly 5 years, and who arguably completed the trio of schemers we were back in the day. It was pure happenstance that we then walked past the White House while headed toward a hotel to meet one of Amy’s former professors from law school, a meeting which both of us enjoyed as we all sat around and talked about legal stuff (even if her and I were severely underdressed for the venue!).
We also went to Mount Vernon one day, a very wonderful experience for anyone even remotely interested in history. One of my favorite takeaways is George Washington, a man we are often taught is the height of humbleness, painted his dining room an atrocious bright green because it was a very expensive color and showed off his wealth (and apparently aided in digestion?)
In addition, Virginia just absolutely satisfied that craving for Fall that I’ve had for months now. Midland still has days that push into the 80’s, and there’s very few trees here to even turn yellow when the time comes. But Virginia was in the absolute height of Fall. Everything was orange and red, the weather was snappy cold, and there was a life in the chill air that makes people walk faster and hot tea taste sweeter and laughter richer.
We also took some time to wander around the Patrick Henry College campus, the Generation Joshua offices, and the HSLDA offices. Which was so much fun to see everything and meet people and see old friends. It had a weird feeling of going home, but one I’d never been to. I sent Alex a snapchat of Lake Bob, and he laughed that they’d named it that, but I couldn’t figure out how to convey that I had known about Lake Bob since I was in my early teens, that stories of people getting dunked in it had been an (oddly, I admit) part of the myth of PHC that had long been built up in my mind. Getting to wander around the world of GenJ again felt like going back to a younger version of myself, teenage Tori who had made it such a big part of her life. That part of me still nerded out a quite a bit, still rose up from the depths of the past to take me on a memory trip. But it is a kinda weird feeling to visit place that your younger self was obsessed with but which you’ve sense moved on from in many ways. A bittersweet reminiscence filled with what-could-have-beens if I’d stuck with it just a little more, or if Alex and I had moved to Virginia and I could have plugged back into that community. It’s still a beloved thing, but not one I can really access anymore.
We did manage to beg our way into getting some of the OG GenJ hoodies! (My 2 old ones died years ago from overuse). Long since believed to be discontinued, apparently there were a few XL blue ones floating around in storage. They’re way too big, but now I can wear a hoodie over another hoodie, so I guess I’m ready for Texas’ next power outage.
And there were all sorts of mini adventures to fill in the rest of the time – community theater shows and trying new foods and used book stores and thrift shopping and story plotting and nature walks and cozy nights reading books on the couch and all sorts of wonderful memories. This post would be way to long to list them all.
Here’s to planning on not letting it be another 5 years between visits.
I Say It Better In Writing 