Returning 'home'

Greeley, Colorado

Our first stop on our travels was to return to Greeley, where I grew up and where Kris and I went to college, got married, and where seven of our kids were born. The oldest of the children who are currently traveling with us was the last to be born here, and we moved before he was one, so none of them remember living here. Their grandparents are still here though, in fact we are staying at Grandma's house, so they are not completely unfamiliar with the area. Still we took an afternoon this week to take them on a 'tour' of significant places from our pasts. 

We didn't stick to chronological order, as that would have required too much back and forth across the city, even so, our first stop was the house I grew up in. We just drove by, pausing briefly across the street to take a picture. But when we took them to the homes we actually lived in as a family, we made them get out of the car and pose in front of the houses ever so briefly. We tried to be pretty stealthy, but even so we got some weird looks from neighbors at at least one of the houses. 

House number one. It's back there, I swear. Behind the tiny pine tree we planted.

House number 2. Noah was a baby in this house.

We also went by our first apartment together, and Kris and I did get out and do a quick walk by the front door. The sketchiness of the neighborhood seemed decidedly more pronounced than it did when we were college students.

We took them by most of the schools I attended growing up, beginning with my junior high because it was only a few blocks from my house. I was explaining how I had walked to school as we drove my basic route. We turned up the road I walked every school day through eighth and ninth grades, the football field and track were to our right just like I remembered, and then we turned left into what I thought was definitely the parking lot of John Evans Jr High (probably middle school by now). It still looked like a parking lot, a very badly kept one, but where the school should have been was a big, empty field. Well that was a surprise. My kids are probably all worried about my state of mind now, so sure I had attended school where plainly there was none. So later we drove by my high school and elementary school too, just to verify they still existed.

Central HS, looking very intact, thank goodness.

When we got to the university, we parked and got out to walk the campus. I think I heard the kids issue an audible sigh of relief when Kris returned from checking the doors to his old freshman residence hall to report that the building was locked. Unlike the dorms though (and every other building on campus), the music hall was open, and dedicated music students were actually spending their Memorial Day in a few of the practice rooms. The kids plainly expected to be arrested at any moment, but still dutifully followed their dad into the building. They became braver the longer we were there with no sign of a SWAT team swooping in and soon were comfortably wandering and wondering if they could try out the freight elevator. 

We took them from one side of campus to the other. When we passed this: 

Fionnula read "Presented by the class of 1910," and asked,"was that your class, Mom?" Umm, no, but considering that once her older brothers, reading about an extinct volcano that was thought to have last erupted 60,000 years ago, asked me if I remembered it happening, well, I take this as an improvement. Its the right century at least.

And of course we had to demonstrate the famous diagonal cross walk that connects the old part of campus to the new. When someone pushes the crosswalk button, the traffic lights turn red in all directions so pedestrians can just cross diagonally right through the intersection. Its a fabulous innovation. If you are a pedestrian anyway.

It was a fun afternoon reminiscing.

The new-ish bear statue on campus.