Bean Days, Blue Nights: My Childhood

Thursday, September 8, 2011

My Childhood

It's a pretty weird feeling introducing a husband of the present and the future to a pretty significant part of the past. Superman and I met toward the end of college, so besides just hearing stories about each other's childhoods, and visiting the area where we grew up, our history is really just that: stories.

But last weekend, Superman got to actually experience a significant part of my childhood: Mackinac Island. Every year since I was 3 years old, my family would spend the last weekend of summer in Mackinac Island. My dad attended a conference there and we spent our time riding horses and playing by the lake.

I think at some point in my 14-year-old head, I imagined one day being able to continue the tradition with my future husband... okay, that's a lie. I don't think I ever thought about that. In fact, introducing the past to the future was... weird.

Like when I showed Superman the haunted theater that I finally had the guts to go into after walking by it every year, only to pee my pants (don't ask me how old I was). Enh, we're way past the point of having any shame...

Or walking into the Grand Hotel and knowing every square inch of the place enough to point out the order of the shops on the bottom floor and the store hours.

I think Superman really got a sense of a part of me that has never really left just by experiencing where I came from. And I saw the Island in a way I never have before.

I think for the first time in more than 20 years, I really internalized that Mackinac Island was an actual military fort. It's one of those things I always knew, but never really thought about -- until a few years and an army wife status later...