I lived in Sarasota, Florida since I was ten.
This bridge has held deep meaning for me since then. I moved from St. Petersburg, across the water, to Sarasota. It hurt. I had friends and the thought of going to a new school was one I dreaded.
My teen years were spent in Sarasota, only moving once, as though transitioning further from childhood to adulthood. The new house representing another stage in my growth as a woman.
In 1980, the bridge was hit by a drunk driver, taking out a piece of the span. One car fell over onto the barge that hit the bridge, another car stopped inches from where the span was broken. The people in both cars survived. A grayhound bus landed in the water, all died.
For a time, only one span was used to service traffic going both ways on the bridge. The new design was made with one span instead of two seperate ones.
The accident happened a year before I graduated high school. Struck down but not destroyed, the new bridge went up, after a few years of rebuilding.
In the time before the new bridge, I had run into abusive people, challenges, and things that flew in the face of my Christian upbringing. It was hard to accept that there were people who didn't accept things I did, simple things. Sexual harassment, propositions to cheat, using the elderly instead of helping them. I thought my head was going to explode, I couldn't believe how day to day these things were.
Then the bridge was rebuilt.
Stronger, more beautiful than the last one. She leads the way across smooth water to the opposite shore, offering a safe passage.
I can be like that.
There might be sharks in the water, hazards on land, but I have a choice to navigate my way. I don't have to fall into the water, or be victim to land sharks either.
I can be true to myself.
Maybe I give too much credit to a hunk of steel and concrete. I even have pieces of the old skyway in my jewelry box. She is a beacon to me, a symbol of what it is to reach out and effect your part of the world, no matter how small it is.
Is there a landmark, any place, you feel drawn toward?
tell me about it.
Jen
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Hi. I don't really have one particular landmark but I am drawn to the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast. I live here and we've survived Hurricane Katrina. The coastline still has empty nothingness for many miles but there is new spotty growth along the shoreline. It'll never be the same. All the large southern homes are gone and most of the growth is now commercialized, but we're tough and Katrina didn't stop us. It kicked us in the butt, but:) we're getting back up. It just takes along, long time.
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