A new chance to revisit the past

Now that summer is gone and fall is well underway, the time is drawing ever nearer for the day that I will hopefully find myself facing that epic passageway across the Chesapeake Bay. It’s been a few years since I laid eyes on that monumental bridge, way back when my husband and I went to Ocean City. This was even before we were married; we were just dating at that point. We went in the pickup and he drove, and so I was able to look down over the edge when we were in the right hand lane. While the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is familiar to me, I am still excited to be able to see it up close, and to actually walk its deck. The only other way to get a close view is if you get stuck in a traffic jam, which are of course unpredictable and no fun at all to sit in. But you still can’t walk across it. This is something I’ve always wanted to do, long before the collapse of the Key Bridge.

I really do wonder if I will be able to feel it moving beneath my feet. I suppose I might be very surprised, like I was when I traversed the catwalk of the New River Gorge Bridge. That was a bit more than I had expected. Speaking of that bridge, later this month it probably won’t be moving much at all for a short period of time, as it will be closed to vehicle traffic for one day. This happens during the annual “Bridge Day” festival. There will only be people milling around on its deck, watching as the base jumpers parachute off from it. The Bay Bridge may not move much either on the annual day of its walk, with pedestrians rather than vehicles using it. My mom said she could feel it move when she drove over it, but I swear I think that some of that apparent sensation is more about anxiety than actual movement. Being in a vehicle I doubt that motion would be all that perceptible. But then again, people swore up and down that the Key Bridge moved and they could feel it while driving over it. When I drove across it for the last time, I noticed a slight bouncing up and down motion, which I attributed to the decrepit looking road surface. But then again, I wasn’t afraid on my last drive across it and so I did not perceive that sensation as the bridge itself moving. Now that the Key Bridge is gone, there is no way to determine the source of that apparent bouncing. As for the Bay Bridge moving (or not), I guess I will just have to find out.

Sometimes in life I do get the chance to revisit the past, to go back to some place from long ago and re-experience something from years, or decades, ago. The Bay Bridge is but one thing, a memory from my earliest trips to Ocean City with my family that still exists. Its newer span was completed when I was a toddler, so I’ve crossed it ever so often from the time it was built. So many locations from my past (and sadly, many people as well) are long gone from this earth and they live on only in memories. The ultimate re-visit of a place from my past happened several years ago. Actually it occurred on that same trip that lead me and my mom to cross that bizarre bridge in Savannah, Georgia. But to explain this one, I will have to start from the beginning, way back in my past. Back to an event that ignited in me a terrible fear that ruled a small facet of my life for two decades. A fear that developed into a phobia that I managed for avoid for a long time. One that would take me some 20 years to get over.