Nostalgia // Romantic Virginia, Part 1

I like revisiting memories from my childhood and wanted to do that a little bit here for a different kind of post. Maybe you can relate to a childhood perspective and visiting grandparents?

The Magical Place

Visiting Nanny and Pops was always a very magical, romantic concept to me as a young girl. They have a beautiful house in Hampton, VA, where all things wonderful, fun, and exciting were sure to happen.

Packing half a suitcase with a few pairs of underwear and my toothbrush, I would dream about all the fun we were going to have. Even though the five of us girls would pack into a small van with our parents, which would normally be a recipe for a miserable time, I looked forward to the 4-hour road trip. I say that, but honestly, I slept most of the trip there and back. Something about the warmth of a cramped car, my pillow, and the predictable shaking that highway miles always gave our van would put me right to sleep. Of course, there was the occasional jostle of a fight in the back seat or someone complaining about needing to pee, but our trips were still pretty smooth and painless.

The favorite part of the trip was always going through the tunnel underneath the James River. I would have a slight tinge of fear as we initially drove in that this time, the walls would crumble and we’d drown. But that quickly went away as the wonder of knowing I was under the water hit me. Once we were past the beginning of the dive, it was dark with reddish lights showing drivers the way out.

Once we survived the tunnel, the rest of the drive was only about ten minutes longer. Of course, that still seemed like such a long time, so we appointed landmarks identifying specific milestones we reached for that last ten-minute stretch. This helped those last terrible minutes fly by.

The first were the Virginia walls. They are tall, concrete walls built alongside the road to keep the backyards of residential areas private.

Next is the 'Virginia turn', which is a ridiculously long spiral off the interstate onto a highway closer to our anticipated stop. We always let the force of turning around such a long steep spiral throw us against each other as we giggled and held on for dear life.

The third and final ‘landmark’ is the half a mile long dirt road—at the end of which was Nanny and Pops. As we bumped along the dirt road, we rolled down the windows and all gathered on the right side of the car to be the first one to spot their house…

My wonderful grandma (Nanny)

The story is to be continued...