picture in picture \05.27\

picture in picture \05.27\

Posted by Lauren at 9:30 PM ✪ No comment yet

No matter where I go in this world, there are remnants of Michigan in my blood.  When summer hits, those remnants become more potent and I can feel the pull.  As much as I appreciate and enjoy patio dining and street festivals in Chicago, there is something about beach towns and fresh "country" air.  Hearing Tim Allen's voice narrating odes to Pure Michigan may drive the point home, too.  Although I generally find myself eschewing advertising's effects on my attitudes and preferences (only natural when you spend six years study how to break down and analyze it), michigan.org did it right.

So, I found myself making an impromptu road trip to finish out this holiday weekend.  Mom called and offered up a free tank of gas deal.  Sold.  Then she threw in that Dad thought Monday would be a good day to head up to Traverse City and do a wine tasting tour.  I started throwing clothes in a bag.  Three hours later, I was enjoying a glass of malbec on their back patio.

As late afternoon rolled around, my parents suggested heading downtown Grand Rapids to take a walk and see what kind of mischief we could find.  As it turns out, a Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend bred zero activity.  And, yet, wandering was entertainment enough: murals, mosaics, buildings, and my parents retracing the stops they made as they tried to induce my fetal self to pop out back in 1984.

In a particular church near the hospital, my parents hold a fond memory that I have somehow never heard until today.  They decided to wait until birth to find out the sex of all three kids.  So, as they wandered the city on that cold March day, they were still wondering who was about to appear in their life.  When they visited the small Catholic church, my Dad prayed; saying that it didn't matter if it was a boy or girl, as long as the baby was healthy.  He made a short addendum to that prayer though, letting the big guy know that if there happened to be a girl hanging out in the baby inventory, he'd really like one of those.

My Mom prefers to believe that my sex was determined then and there, rather than paying attention to all of that standard gestational stuff.  Following this poignant, nostalgic moment in storytelling, my natural responsive impulse couldn't be denied.  I proclaimed that it now made complete sense why I've never been very girly; my feminine self only began forming on the day of my birth.  This was met, expectedly, with "a look" from Mom.  At the root of all, I did appreciate the story though.  It sort of feels like the beginning of my personal history.  And I can only hope that I'm turning out to be the little girl that my Dad sent up a prayer for back in 1984.