Saturday, June 21, 2014

Conquering Fear

I used to have a fear of bridges.

The kind of fear that makes you close your eyes and keep 'em closed whenever you cross one. Of course, this makes it kinda difficult to drive over bridges with one's eyes closed.

It turns out there's a name for this fear. Gephyrophobia. The fear of crossing bridges.

I used to suffer from gephyrophobia every summer when we lived in Michigan. That's because my husband insisted that there was no vacation spot worth visiting if it wasn't in the Upper Peninsula. The UP, as we Michiganders like to call it. And to reach the UP, you have to cross this:


The Mackinaw Bridge, gateway to the Upper Peninsula, bisecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The stories of this bridge are plentiful. Yugos (remember that car?) have been known to blow over that bridge on windy days and sink in the frigid waters below. And winter? Ice? Don't even go there!

The bridge just goes on and on and on...


Are we over yet?


On one of our family vacations, when our oldest sons were just seven and four, we had to cross back over this bridge on a foggy day. FOG!


At the time, I considered moving to the Upper Peninsula permanently. Just sell our house remotely, by telephone, and never ever ever have to cross the bridge again.

I shut my eyes and kept them shut. Tightly shut!

And then my son, Luke, piped in from the back seat. "Dad? What would happen if the van blew off the bridge and landed in the water?"

Aaack!

That's when his younger brother chimed in.

"Yuke!" he said, because he had a funny accent at the time and that's what he called his brother. "Yuke! Don't you know that Mom's afwaid of the bwidges!"

We still laugh about this story almost fifteen years later!

But a funny thing has happened recently. I'm not nearly as afraid of crossing bridges as I once was.

Perhaps it's because I have to cross the Glass City bridge every time I visit family in Michigan.


Or maybe, just maybe, it's because we moved to a city with this skyline full of bridges at every turn!


I think I am learning to conquer my fear.

You hear that, bridges? I am not afraid of you anymore!



Eek! Okay, maybe we can just be fair weather friends.

I purchased two things last year as soon as we moved to Pittsburgh. One, this stamp set from Paper Smooches, and two, this bridge die from Memory Box. Put the two together and you've got the Pittsburgh skyline, right down to the cloud cover!



I made this card for the Anything Goes challenge at Paper Smooches! (click on the logo on the left sidebar for more info!). The city skyline stamps are, in fact, straight, but I curved them on the clear block to make it look more like the hills of Pennsylvania.

{Today's Brew: Metropolis stamp set (Paper Smooches), Memory Box bridge die, Memory Box stencil, PTI card stock and inks, Prisma markers}

Thanks for visiting the cafe today!

8 comments:

  1. Such a clever take on the Pittsburgh skyline! I love it! And yikes to bridges. Thanks so much for playing with us at PaperSmooches Sparks!

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  2. It's a family thing...you may have been very young BUT your brain has obviously stored the moment...leaving Cedar Point during a storm...crossing the road/bridge-like thing that they had in 'the old days"...waves crashing over the barricades...over the road...screams...eerie silence. Okay, I now have goosebumps AND crossing the Mackinaw fills me with that same angst...definitely a long bridge fear...yikes! I'm gonna have one of those dreams now!

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    1. I do remember that trip! Mostly the storm and the screaming and the water splashing over the road. I think that may have been Dad's last trip to Cedar Point! :LOL!

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  3. The Mackinaw bridge freaks me out too! I live in WI. One time years ago we had an older Winnebago camper that we called "The Toater", as I was boxy and tall. Some kids outside an ice cream stand were asking each other what it was even!

    Well, we went across the Mack bridge and it felt like we were going to be blown off. I was screaming at my husband that there was no way we were going to make it. Ugh! The causeway in the Florida keys is scary too! Great sory! Thanks!

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    1. Great story, Deb! I cannot even imagine going over the mighty Mack in an RV of any kind! And the Florida causeway...yikes! We did the UP trip a few years ago, but ended up driving through Wisconsin instead. Yea! No bridge! LOL!

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  4. LOL- Jenny hit it! It is the Cedar Point incident. I too have that fear of bridges.

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    1. Bridges in an RV? That must be extra nightmare-inducing! LOL!

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