The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: MUSEUM

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above. 

This month's prompts include: mail, moon, mouse, moving, museum, music, music lesson, name, necklace, neighbor, nightgown.

MUSEUM

Irene & Lynn
laughing and learning
with a big mirror
this past fall
at a museum gift shop :)

The earliest memory I have of going to a museum on my own was as a 16 year old new driver on my first road trip with my sister Lynn from Birmingham, AL to Port St. Joe, FL to visit our grandparents. I'm a little horrified and impressed when I think about us jumping into the car for a 7 hour trip with no parents, no cell phones, no gps. We knew the way, because we've gone so many times before. And if we got turned around, we had a road atlas. We'd be fine. “Call us when you get there,” my mother instructed. And off we went! 

First we stopped in at the Pioneer Museum in Troy, Alabama – which is about half-way. The Pioneer has a locomotive out front, several old buildings, like a school and a church. Inside there's old farm equipment and a printing press – stuff like that. Aside: This past week when I drove past the Pioneer I saw that it has a bright new sign. I'm glad to see the place is still thriving. Maybe I'll stop in sometime soon.

While we were in Port St. Joe, Lynn and I decided to visit the Constitution Convention Museum State Park.  Which must have pleased my father very much! (My father and I shared, among many things, a museum habit.) I remember wandering through the grounds and exhibit hall, reading signs about 1830s life, laughing, and learning. Lynn and I did a lot of that together. We still do! :)