2000-11-08 - 21:45 MST

November 8, 2000

One Again

I made a long drawn out off across the barren prairie, trip to Desolate, Isolated Airfield this afternoon to pick up Heather and our grandson. He is a crippled man due to a botched up brain tumor operation when he was about six years old. He shambles around, alert and intelligent and enjoys new sights -- this was his first trip out of the country.

So Grandmother and he went to Cancun for a few days, it snowed here and pretty well melted off before they got home -- they remarked on the coolness (around 45 Degrees F.) but enjoyed the fact that the sun was shining.

They suffered a delayed takeoff from Cancun and a huge line in customs, so were tired but happy to spot old Gramps when they came out of the restricted area. Our car was parked remarkably close, so loading up was quick and easy.

I came out early, forewarned that our touted new airport was getting crowded on parking. Due to the fact that my vertical time and forward time is severely limited, I roved the parking structure around and around -- up and down, until finally I found a parking space on the upper deck luckily as close as it was possible to where they would come out.

They were on a chartered flight and I made great progress reading The Brethren while I waited. Before I headed out I knew they had taken off an hour late down there, but the wait for them to get through customs was interminable, there were at least three loads of people from different flights going through customs and it appeared that some had come in on large aircraft with many passengers.

So across town to Lakewood to take grandson home, he has cluster headaches and didn't take his meds with him so was hurting pretty bad. Then towards home -- all this though the height of rush hour, bumper to bumper all the way. There could not have been more than a fender bender accident though because no one could get up enough speed to get hurt or hurt anyone else.

We did stop off at a restaurant we like about halfway home and get comfortably seated and had a nice meal. The traffic the rest of the way home had loosened up a bit so we arrived and unloaded and settled in at home.

I bached at home alright, ate right etc. and kept occupied and happy, but that presence of, "The Empty Chair," was there all the same. I miss her when she is gone but I am happy that she can still go and have fun.

I am looking forward to Christmas and New Years at our daughter's house in Oregon, her husband is a super good conversationalist who works in Academia so I learn from him each time there. And our two beloved grandkids there, a boy and a girl as lively as drops of water on a hot skillet both very communicative and doing well in school, I learn from them too and love every minute of time we spend with them. Heather and daughter will shop 'til they drop . . . . . . . . and then it is up to me to figure out how to get all that jazz home. Things are interesting there.

Before they moved into that house I had installed the shelving she wanted in the closets and other jobs around there -- stuff I wouldn't be up to now. But now I feel guilty that there are no jobs for me to do while there, so I happily enjoy my guilt while joyfully playing with the grandchildren. Heather does dolls with the girl and the boy and I do boy stuff, Legos and things like that -- about two years ago I acted as his navigator while he built a "Perpetual Motion Machine," it was quite a dinger and would run and run and run some more. He did a good job on it, he has assembled the plastic model aircraft from kits and I acted as a mentor on that too. I have been an audience while they both did their things at the local park, he is getting good at shooting baskets and they are both doing well on their bikes. They live in a very hilly section of Eugene, so the bikes are hauled down to the park which is quite level and safe for them to exercise.

I laugh when I remember him as a tot riding his "Hot Wheels," around and around on the big back deck at his house. The deck made a good sounding board and the rough wheels made a ferocious noise which after a time became rather distracting. Who ever was hurting the most would figure out something to tempt him away from the "Wheels" for awhile until our eardrums quit their shimmy act. I was amazed at the amount of energy he expended doing that and I think it has showed well in his development. I also remember catching hell from his mama for teaching him how to crawl upstairs -- but his house and ours had nice padded, carpeted stairs. I finally eased the tension a bit when I tried to make the point that he would probably have started it maybe just a week or two later anyway, besides he and I had fun !

Gee whizz, why should we grow up all the way when it is so much fun for us to be kids? Grandma teaching Jacks and giving Ladybug a start on simple sewing and both of them spoiling her dolls something terrible. One of her dolls is "Baby Boo," the same one our Baby Boo treasured and had worn the hair off the poor thing, she survived and thrived after her trip to the Doll Hospital here. All her dolls have nice names too. She has in her room the little kidney shaped stool I built for her mama's Christmas present when she was about three years old -- Ladybug will soon be too tall to sit on it herself, I will bet though that the dolls will get years of use out of it.

Each of them have something that Heather and I had and treasured in our childhood, as well as something that their great grandpas and great grandmas had. So, I stand and swagger stomp and sing "TRADITION" as Tevye in "Fiddler On The Roof" did with such proud emphasis.

There is a time to be apart and nicer to be together when we are One Again !

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