Sun #WingWritingChallenge Day 1

I love the sun. I'm not a heat seeker. I'm most comfortable when the temperature is mild, but I do love sunshine. I even have a playlist on Spotify - all the songs on it have something to do with the sun. There's "I Can See Clearly Now" by Jimmy Cliff, Katrina and the Waves are "Walking on Sunshine" while Avril Lavigne is "Sippin' on Sunshine", and of course Duran Duran is on the mix with "(Reach Up for the) Sunrise". What is it that the Beatles say? I need to laugh, and when the sun is out, I've got something I can laugh about. Oh,yes, I can relate. Sun makes me happy.

When I saw the word 'sun' for today's topic, one thing came to my mind right away. You're going to think that I've totally lost focus as you read, but I ask that you trust me and keep going. You'll see. I'll get there in the end, I promise.

 

In December of 2008, we were faced with a relocation for Steven's job. I was thirty-eight at the time and I'd traveled a lot, but I'd never lived outside of Colorado. We had to decide in a very short time whether we were going to follow the job, or be faced without employment. The decision wasn't a difficult one.

Maya was nine at the time, Scott had just turned six. I packed them and my mom inside my little Audi before stuffing as many games, movies and other traveling necessities into the trunk. Then the four of us led the almost 1,700 mile cross country trek. Behind us, Steven was driving a huge U-Haul truck stuffed to the brim with the rest of our worldly possessions, and drug our pick up truck on a trailer behind that. Joey, our yellow lab, sat beside him on the seat of the moving van, and my brother-in-law brought up the rear driving Steven's 1999 Camaro. We were a sight to behold - not unlike a traveling circus.

 

It was a long drive across seven states. According to Google maps, it was about twenty-four hours travel time, but we took three days to do it. We left on January 23rd, smack dab in the middle of winter - and there wasn't a whole lot of sun to be had during most of the trip. As a matter of fact, we had some pretty wintry road conditions as we drove through West Virginia, and the skies remained cloudy and overcast as we moved further toward the east coast.

As we crossed the North Carolina border, I was getting very tired. I'd listened to the same episodes of the animated Transformers about forty-eight times too many and, as much as I loved that Audi, I desperately wanted out of the car. 

I looked up and saw a break in the clouds, and as we continued to head into our new state, the patch of blue grew larger and larger. I smiled, and neither my kids nor my mom seemed all that surprised when I began singing ...

"Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right."

I'm not sure if it's because they were all so delirious, or if I burst out into song enough that it isn't noteworthy any longer. Either way, the sun did come out, and that will always be my first of many wonderful memories I have of North Carolina.