I got into making this blog at first to record my thoughts over this pregnancy. I kept reading about moms who journaled their feelings and how much it meant to them to come back to that years later after the kid was born.
Once I started writing what came out of me wasn't 100% what was going on in the moment, but I also got to dump out stories that have been floating around in my head for years. Eventually I realized that this year we are basically moving on from one stage in our lives- the Laurel Lane stage- to the current stage of a new house and a kid and this blog was a way to capture this passing stage in my life before my mental frame moved on. I then began to write this blog as a time capsule, as a form of therapy that allows me to give meaning to this last stage of my life and record it in a place where I can come back to it when I am ready to.
But as part of that I had a realization- that the previous stage in our lives- the Denis Lane stage- had already faded. The mindset I had when I went to UTPB, or when we went to Alpine for the clinic there, or just what it was like to live in that duplex had completely left me. I do have some strong memories of certain parts mostly because in the last year I tried to archive my memories of Xena and many of her best ones happened in that part of our lives. But the actual mindset, which is basically my personal time travel machine when I can roll back into one, seems to have been lost to me. Being more than one stage of life back it just seems too far away from our current lives. With one exception: Comanche Trail Park.
Comanche Trail Park is a park on the west side of Odessa that offers disc golf and what is maybe the only shaded trail in all of Odessa. When we lived in Odessa I went there a few times for the disk golf, but we rarely went to the park opting to walk around UTPB or our neighborhood instead. Then Luna entered into our lives and this puppy could not be contained in a little duplex so we knew we had to take her walking. But Luna hated the sun even as a puppy, so any route that wasn't shaded wasn't viable. Enter Comanche Trail Park.
I think I remember these walks so well because they were the first thing that felt like the current part of our lives. The trees in the park feel like what would be our neighborhood in Leander, and loading the dogs up and taking them across town for a walk was foreshadowing for when we loaded them up to leave Odessa for good. Another possible reason is today I miss having that park as a resource, which is not a thought I have had the last couple of years when the Mason Creek neighborhood provided some excellent walking paths.
At Laurel Lane we didn't need a park, we didn't need that route. We could just walk out our door and have a great neighborhood to go through, even with shade if a particular path was taken during the right time of the day. When we first moved down to Leander we did take the dogs to a park here almost out of habit only to retreat back to the neighborhood path that was easy and convenient. But our new house doesn't offer the same experience, and suddenly I miss being able to easily drive to a place where there is a trail like at Comanche Trail Park.
I can remember the twists in the park trail well, better than almost anything in Odessa today. I can remember where the shade stopped, and how hot Luna got the day we went past that. I can remember the how those walks were a reprieve from the pressure I felt in 2012 to take my new degree and improve my life, and the many misfires I had along that path. I remember a young little boxer that loved to get outside, and a Xena that loved marching down a piece of concrete. I can remember how much that one park contrasted with the rest of cardboard West Texas, and how much better of an experience it was than the UTPB trail.
As I write this blog I am basically examining the last couple of years, and from this standpoint it is clear the moment we started taking Luna to Comanche Trail Park was the moment we began to move into our new life phase. I try to take the positive energy from that time, from the moment I learned we would get to leave, and bring it into a today when I face new challenges yet again.
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