The Atlas Story

Every couple years my mother has a rummage sale, it's usually a 2 day thing, with several of my family members contributing. She has no problem finding items to put on her sales, mostly because she is a pack rat and saves everything. She calls them keepsakes, I call them junk. I am the exact opposite of my mother, I am very much a minimalist. I abhor clutter anywhere in my house, if it doesn't have an immediate place in the house, or it's not holiday decorations, it's toast.

Clearly, all of my mothers sentimental genes got passed onto my siblings.

This year I decided that I'm going to make the trip back to SD and put some items on the rummage. Since we moved into our new house in November, most of our items are already still packed in boxes. Because I was just trashing my mothers flaws, I feel it's fair to point out one of my biggest flaws; I like change, maybe a little too much if you're my husband. Every time I get the house decorated just the way I like it, I either want to move into a different house, or redecorate. So, my constant need for fresh and fashionable design made it easy to find quality items to sell on the rummage.

Back to the Atlas....

So, I was sitting in the office sorting through piles of novels to sell and I came across a couple of atlases, gifts our insurance agent had given us a while back. I remember thinking at the time what a strange gift it was. In the era of GPS, and blackberries, does anyone even use atlases anymore? I guess going through all of my old books that day made me feel a little reminiscent, because I picked up the atlas and starting turning through the pages, thinking back to a game my brother and I used to play when we were little.

We used to take an atlas and sort though it state by state, each picking out cities and landmarks from that state that we hoped to visit someday. We would also pick out different cities where we wanted to live someday. I would always come back to the same town in Oregon state; Astoria. Perhaps, it's because my favorite movie at the time Kindergarten Cop took place there and I thought it seemed like a beautiful place to live. Who knows where my thoughts come from, I swear they just pop into my head with no rhyme or reason to them. The point is, when I was 11 years old, I truly believed that I would visit all these places.

So, today I'm going through my atlas and jotting down all the places I want to visit with my family. Some, I've already been, some I have not. I owe it to that little girl to live out her dreams. I'm also holding onto that wish list of places I would like to someday live. If I have learned anything in my 31 years, it's that you never know where life will take you and maybe someday I might end up in Astoria, or San Francisco, or Aspen.

For now, I'm holding onto this atlas. Hopefully someday my own children might enjoy the game my brother and I used to play all those years ago. With nothing more that a dream in their hearts and all the ambition in the world to make those dreams come true.