Samhain and Hometowns, on a Beautiful Autumn Afternoon…Or, Delco Girl at Longwood

We are currently about ten minutes into a seventy minute drive.

“We” includes two children four or under, BTW, and the “drive” is in a car with no entertainment, Bluetooth, or technological respite from boredom.

Also, we’re heading back to the scene of the crime of my childhood, my hometown, Delco proper, and there’s really NO good reason to invite flashbacks when they can be avoided, wouldn’t you agree?

So, WHY, you might then be asking, are we embarking on an hour-plus drive to Chadds Ford, by choice, when we could be doing…well…NOT that?

It’s because it’s Autumn, and Halloween approaches, and Longwood beckons, and the siren song of changing seasons calls me back home.

Because, for someone who hates the outdoors, I like flora an awful lot. Because, creative energy is destructive energy, sublimated, and beauty is creative energy incarnate. Because Longwood is beautiful, because Delaware County is beautiful, because, despite my CPTSD, coming home always feels different than going anywhere else.

And as Autumn dies, and everything else dies, and the lights go up at Longwood, and winter consumes us all like A Song of Ice and Fire, I will be content knowing I existed in Delco for a short time, as I did so many times and years previously, starting school years and celebrating holidays and, yes, visiting Longwood, and learning, the whole time, about who I wanted to be.

Thanks, Delco, for the memories, the trauma, the formative start, and Longwood Gardens. You never disappoint.

Please enjoy, as well, this photo of a lotus pad upon which Omri, slipping my grasp, attempted to stand before falling halfway in a pond and dousing his shoe, taken while Mark removed said wet shoe.

We had a killer time, TBH. *

*written a full two hours’ worth of nature later.