Day 5 -- A picture of your favorite memory

This is the river in front of the cabin in Nebraska. A picture, sure, but it is so very much more to me. The Kealy cabin has been in the family for generations. My father grew up there, I grew up there and I long for my children to grow up there too. It is peace and happiness for me. It truly is my happy place.

It is a little run down cabin -- with a screened in porch that goes all the way around the concrete, cracked floor. There is nothing fancy about it. My brothers and sisters and I loved to sleep on cots on that patio. We would wake up to the smell of breakfast being made or deer or wild turkeys spotted. Occassionally the smell of skunk would fill the air (a smell I've come to actually enjoy -- just like smokebombs!) In front of the cabin is the North Platte River. We spent hours building toad forts (we found Squeaky every year) that got destroyed by snakes, building sand castles, catching minnows, setting fish traps (setlines)made delicately with a milk carton or floating down "from the bridge." Kelly broke her collarbone in that river. I got a wasp nest in my bathing suit. We saw all kinds of fish - carp and catfish. We messed with turtle traps and beaver dams. We all burnt to a crisp in that river. Then when we were bored...we'd walk down to the lake, probably getting stickers in our stained blueberry barefeet. It's a lake, but it's private and small, and has been called a pond by those unfamiliar with the love the Kealy's have for it. There we would canoe, fish, go bullfrog hunting, watch turtles heads pop up, and beavers slide across the water (I really use to think that beavers were like 25 feet long.) We would try to catch blue gill fish with our hands to win the $100 prize my dad offered. We would spin the canoes around making yellow submarines (that were never yellow). We would dive off the uber bouncy diving board, slide down the super steep slide or fly into the river off the knotted ropes. We would have endless conversations, pee in the woods (if we got out) pick ticks off the dogs, light huge fireworks (pop bottle rockets and roman candles aimed at each other -- M80s, M100s and especially M1000s made it seem like warfare at times), run from my dad or brother throwing them at us and just love family time. We all learned to drive on the roads there - motorcycles first, then cars. The hidden forties were endless trails to which we memorized the bumps and dips to near perfection. We would scour those trails to find firewood (and avoid the poison ivy)for the huge blazing fire pit later that night. While the smell of campfire filled our nose, the lightening bugs were out in full force (remember pulling off the butts and wearing them as rings?) We'd make smores and sing campfire songs. We sang the state song (I don't know I'll askya!), the bumblebee song, songs about Henry the Eighth (he got married to the widow next door, she'd been married seven times before) and Ooleyohcoocoo Ooleyohcoocoo. We sang Row Row Row your boat in arounds. We perfected My Wild Irish Rose. Man, did we ever sing -- and tried to not catch on fire as my Dad would douse the fire with gasoline, burning everything we could think of. We told stories, we made memories.

So, that's why it is my favorite memory. Times at the cabin. And when I ever need to "goto a happy place" you can bet your bottom dollar, my feet are in the sand at the Kealy Cabin in Nebraska -- and chances are...you are too. :)