Movement

You read this here first!

Americans have always had a fascination with movement. The pilgrims and other colonists braved the Atlantic Ocean to search for a better place to live. The pioneers constantly pushed Westward to find their own place. Regrettably they would take this place from the First Americans living here, some of whom were nomadic, which is a lifestyle based on transience. Our way of government is based on movement: both towards a brighter future and towards a more idyllic state of being. What I think makes me most American is the fact that I love to move too.
I don’t mean that changing houses is a personal hobby, although I have done this more than once and have found it to be an adventure that opens new doors and new possibilities. I think to accurately explain my love of movement I have to give a little of my history and my experiences getting from there to here.
I came into existence after my parents met each other in two clubs that normatively are about movement: running club and skiing club. My dad was a pilot, moving through the air with the greatest of ease. My mom was a teacher, passing on knowledge to a new generation of movers and shakers. Together they have made a family that moves in solidarity and individually.
To say we are an active family could be an understatement. My aunt says that she thought my brothers and I would never grow tall because my mom would have us walk too much as we were growing up. She was partially correct as I am 5’7”. With an older brother, sitting still and watching was never something I could stand to do. When Sean (my older brother) ran, I would want to run. If Sean learned to ride a bike, I wanted to learn to ride a bike. When Sean started playing soccer, I was right there with him. In the summer if we were up, we were moving, whether by air, land or sea. By air I am referring to the summer we wanted to fly. We built parachutes out of everything we could find: tarps, umbrellas, garbage bags tied to broomsticks we thought would be a hybrid oar/wing. We were totally wrong in this and none of us are aspiring engineers today. Water was also an integral part of summer even if “the sea” sometimes meant a small lake near our house, the local pool or the sprinklers in our yard.
Sometimes the sea did mean the sea, though. I was able to participate in the great American tradition of family vacations. Sometimes we flew, but mostly we drove. We went to places like Glacier Park and the Gulf of Mexico. Our vacations usually included visiting my grandparents house three hours away or my other grandparents house three thousand miles away. These trips included stops at museums, restaurants, tourist traps, amusement parks, historical sites, campgrounds, hotels, motels, Holiday Inns and as many rest stops as there were on the side of the interstate. We sometimes did this as a summer trip and sometimes as a cross-country move to new places and new possibilities; our Labradors would come on both.
The best part of these trips was that we were together. All six of us were together in our Astro van with the two dogs and our seventeen suitcases in the back. We were together through card games, our car games and every Harry Potter book-on-tape. We were together for the one time we watched a DVD in the car. It was playing in the car next to us as we crept through heavy traffic from Tampa to Orlando. Most times we laughed, sometimes we slept, and sometimes I was kicked out and made to walk along the road.
In high school I started to drive and it changed the way I thought about moving. I could go when I wanted (until curfew) and where I wanted (which was mostly up and down Main Street.) Turns out I wasn’t meant to be a race car driver any more than I was meant to be a bird or tall as I have hit five deer, two pheasants, a cow, a tree and the ditch. All separate incidents. I also found some new modes of transportation like four-wheeling and driving a tractor. I rolled the four-wheeler and ran the tractor into a hay bale.
Then I moved on to college and all sorts of modes of transportation in trying to get there and back home. I have carpooled, been dropped off by my dad, taken the bus, the train and a plane, and most recently driven my very own car here. Driving is fastest, the bus is cheapest and the train is the most comfortable. While here I ride my bike to class which is a quick alternative to walking and a green alternative to driving. (This whole article, by the way is actually a warning to students walking down the newly christened “Bulldog Alley.” I am on my bike and I have shown an incredible ineptitude when moving by use of vehicles.)
Last Fall I made the biggest move of my life when I went to Spain for four months. I learned that America doesn’t have the best roads or buses or trains. I learned that you have to sit in your assigned seat on a train and saying loudly in English, “There is someone sitting in my seat and I don’t know how to tell them,” does not constitute as a request for someone to get out of the train. I learned that riding in a car called a Panda with your mom on unnamed streets in downtown Sevilla can be the most stressful yet exhilarating driving experience of your life.
Next Spring I will move on physically and figuratively from Gonzaga. I am not sure where I am going or how I will get there, but I do know that I will continue to move. Like many Americans before me I will move along the path that is our life. Sometimes I will have to run and sometimes I will have to crawl. Hopefully, if I try to fly I have more than two garbage bags and a broomstick. Actually, as long as I have the support like that of my brothers and the faith that I can do it, I will try. I will move forward as person and as an American because that is what we do best.