My favorite 110 steps

We all have special places in our lives that, for whatever reason, we make an annual pilgrimage to. While I’m sure our places are different, I’m just as sure that they have one thing common – the place tends to look the same year after year, which only calls attention to how much we change with every visit.

My special place is Eagle Tower in Peninsula State Park in Door County. My mother trudged me up the steps in a baby carrier during my first year of life, and I’ve been back every year since then, ringing in the New Year with friends and family, looking for a way to pass the time or as a means to get some exercise.

Lately, my trips to the tower are made with my new family, meaning the one I’ve started myself. It’s the place where Joey proposed to me, pacing and taking deep breaths to calm his nerves before dropping to one knee. I so knew it was coming. And he so knew the tower had to be the place of our engagement, so it could morph from my special place to our special place, one we could easily get back to year after year. And we have.

Here we are in mid July of 2005, on our one year anniversary. Little did we know that circumstances would bring us to the same spot year after year at about the exact same time. And while the dates of our visits remain the same, we sure change with every visit.

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Here we are, in mid July of 2009, four weeks before Adeline burst onto the scene. From my belly to my face, every ounce of me looks pregnant in this photo. I’m super excited to sport that awesome even-my-eyelids-got-knocked-up look again.

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Here we are a year after that photo was taken. Adeline is just a few weeks shy of her first birthday. Talk about life coming full circle – the baby who made her first trip to the tower in a baby carrier is back, this time trudging her own little girl up the steps for her first visit.

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And here we are a year later, in mid July of 2011, just weeks shy of Adeline’s second birthday, and I am, again, standing on the tower with a big pregnant belly. Only this time, Adeline didn’t need my help to make it up the stairs. She took each step on her own.

I’m sure that next July we will climb the tower again, with Adeline scampering up ahead of us and a new baby in the carrier making his first trek up the steps of a place I hope becomes etched in his and his sister’s memory.

This tower is a major piece of my childhood and adulthood, and I want it to be for my children, too. But I know that ultimately, they will choose the spots they deem worthy of an annual visit. They will have their own unchanging place that serves as the constant when the years fly by and they grow up faster than they can believe. When they go back to a place they first knew as babies with their own babies.

So what’s your special place? Where do you try to get back to at least once a year?

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