family trip to butler, pa.

Stefanie and Paul

Mark and Chris on the back deck

Mark and Me before a nice evening out

Doc and sweet Hannah

Mama Joyce, Lisa and Stef

an avenue of history

The Evans are currently in "recovery"--we took a quick three-day trip to Sandbridge to be with my family, came back to Winston-Salem for one day of insane laundry and packing, and then off to Young Life's Crooked Creek Ranch as leaders from June 18-29 (four of those nights spent sleeping on a bus, one in a hotel and seven one the floor of a cabin at camp), then back home for a couple days, then a two-day trip to just northeast of Philly for the wedding celebration of Lauren Wells and Nate Eakin!  Luckily Sunday night we were able to enjoy some Mexican food and margaritas with the Stogners in order to keep a grasp on some sort of sanity.  

Although the onslaught of travels was a bit crazy, I have felt a sweet peacefulness these last few weeks.  Sandbridge, the only place where us Fickers have maintained roots over the years, always welcomes me back with the untroubled predictability of the tide and the smell of salt in the air. Sand underfoot is never troubling, only comforting. We grew up there and we have enough memories to outnumber the broken shells on the beach.  So many emotions and conversations and fits of laughter and sweet quiet mornings live inside of that old, rickety house on stilts.

To go spend a week at Young Life camp also takes me back to a rich time in my life. There have been times I thought that maybe I don't have "real" or "complete" memories from my childhood spent at Young Life camps with dad on staff assignments because I was so young and saw life through such rose-colored specs, but I've let those doubts go. I met Jesus at Young Life camp, not as a camper, but as a little kid ragamuffing around camp with her sister. It was as real to me then as it is now.  Still now, when I return to camp, I wish my family were there with me and that the history wasn't history, but now.

Finally, our trip to Philadelphia deposited me once again into a sea of childish memories. Mark and I drove from Ashbridge Avenue down to Hillside Drive, the street where we lived when I was young.  Our house was a perfect square, two stories, with a slanted roof and I remember thinking that the bedroom I shared with my sister was neat because the ceiling wasn't flat. I also remember looking out the window on the backyard with the large oak tree that I thought when I got old enough, I'd climb. Mom and I planted merrigolds every spring around the trees and in the flower beds out front. I chose merrigolds because they are bright orange and yellow, my favorite colors.  We had a white picket fence around the small front yard that my dad built and painted one summer for my mom. 

The house is pretty beat up now. I remember a blind man with a massive dog moved in after us and immediately tore down my dad's fence and put up a chain-link fence to keep the dog in. The brick porch out front, which had been crumbling but was, in my opinion, beautiful, is gone now and there is a concrete porch. There aren't merrigolds out front and it just seems strange and different.  I don't know if I can even believe it is the same house.  Our house was such a happy little house and memories of it make me want a small cape cod.  The whole experience was bizarre, sitting in a Jetta with my husband in front of the house that was at one time my beloved castle and watching another family carry on inside.

Time is frightening to me, the way it passes and doesn't forgive or offer a second go. I miss and long for time that has passed and been stored away in the banks of my memory.  But memory, that is the thing I am thankful for. It is a great calm and peace because of the joy of my own history.