Making Memories

Some friends and folks have been sharing their travels and pictures around the nets... and it got me thinking.

I have led a vastly different life than a lot of the people I grew up with.

I'm financially independent and have been for a while.

I've spent more time single than in a relationship over the last 8 years, by choice. I'm picky and I know it... and independent as hell. I don't *need* a guy in my life in order to call myself happy.

I've also not had a huge circle of friends. Once I left AZ, they all but disappeared except for an occasional facebook update, and visits when I'm in AZ. Everyone gets busy and its understandably harder to pack up a new family of 4 than it is one person.

In all this time.. I've done so much. seen so much. learned so much. And most of my significant memories and moments have had no witness but my own heart. Some pictures I was looking at today were of a couple and their baby son. They were in Europe traveling.. but I was more captivated by the unposed family portraits. I've never had that experience in a quality sense, of really seeing new places with someone and being able to both hold the same memories together.

Its not quite the same retelling the stories upon my return. My fear is always.. what happens if I forget? All of these things have shaped me so much. With out someone to trigger my memory.... will these things just fade away? I've tried to write as much as I can in hopes that maybe that will help. Or that pictures can tell a story better than a thousand words.

But a picture can't always capture a feel. It can't capture the music of the wind blowing through the trees and the sun sizzling off the sand... and the smell of rain still lingering in the air.