the end of hope

If our first week in Hope felt like a month, our last week has felt like about ten seconds. I've gotten overwhelmingly busy with Actual Work, and Dan has been juggling a bit of FunMo along with car-repair errands. (Nothing major, don't worry). But it does look like we're both going to meet the Hope Deadline (one chapter, one song), if only by the skin of our teeth.

Yauni and Dave came to visit on Sunday so we finally hit the tourist sites. We planned on meeting at Lake of the Woods, but we ran into them at Fields, natch, when we stopped to buy beach towels. We spent some time at the lake and then went to Sucker's Creek and the Othello Tunnels. Yauni showed Dave her childhood homes (although her mom's old hippie cabin in Othello is now an eco-retreat, haha) and the boys got wowed by the Tunnels. (Dan's planning a Rambo post, stay tuned.) It was such a beautiful day. Finished with pie at the Home Restaurant and a short tour of Eva's house before we had to kick them out so we could watch the Mad Men premiere.

View of the bridge from Sucker's Creek.

Even the Tunnels parking lot is epic.

It's always nostalgic coming back to Hope, but this time it's been especially intense. Partly because my parents aren't here anymore, and partly because I haven't had a proper visit in so many years. And mostly, perhaps, because I'm really shoving my face in the nostalgia, seeking it out and indulging it, as research for the novel's coming-home themes. It's been fun, but I'm looking forward to leaving and returning to 30. No matter how great my Hope memories are (and they really are great), nostalgia is still an intrinsically melancholy thing.

Yesterday on one of my many sloooow drives past my house, which my parents are renting to another family, I saw a young girl in a bathing suit darting out the front door, skipping the steps on the front porch to jump onto the lawn. I could feel the concrete porch under her summer-hardened feet, the cool arrival of the mossy grass. And I actually heard myself saying, in a defensive whine, "Hey!" That's my life, random little girl. Jeez.