The Inexorable March of Time

I was reminded by my friend Brian’s recent comments in a Facebook group about returning to blogging that, “hey, I have a blog, too!” Only I haven’t written anything here for nearly FOUR YEARS, and other than satisfying my own desire to write, I’m not sure why I would continue, or even why I did it in the first place.

At home, on my desk, in my computer bag, etc., I have blank notebooks, big and small, some with stuff written in them, some still completely blank. I don’t expect them ever to be of value to anyone, except maybe sentimental value for a time. It’s like a bit of dialogue in the movie “Arthur” where Arthur Bach (Dudley Moore) says to fiance’ Susan, “Not all of us who drinks is a poet. Maybe some of us drink because we’re not poets.”

Not everyone who buys little notebooks is a writer. Maybe some of us buy little notebooks because we’re not writers (but wish we were). I’m also reminded that some things take discipline, practice, and patience, three things I also wish I had more of.

So, what does all this have to do with time? In the four years since I’ve written anything here our eldest and middle daughters have gotten master’s degrees, our youngest gotten her degree, all three are working and living on their own, we took a trip to England, Scotland, France, and (briefly) Iceland. I took a business trip to Norway and Sweden (the ones in Europe, not the ones in Maine), political and civil discourse in our country has gone from bad to worse, our middle daughter has gotten married and our son-in-law started his medical residency at a naval hospital, and in so many ways and in so many spheres I find myself wondering, “what’s next?”

What’s next? Well, who knows, but maybe I’ll write something about it.

Photo by Monoar Rahman on Pexels.com

Around the World in 223 Days

So neither Phileas Fogg’s fictional feat, nor Michael Palin’s actual one, are in any danger of being eclipsed. But when Lindsay‘s flight lands in Boston later today she will have completed one whole trip around the world. We’ll count the high school trip to France, Spain, and Morocco, and her semester abroad in Uganda, as test flights, like the Mercury or Gemini projects were before the Apollo missions.

Except for eastern Canada and a week in Bermuda I have never been outside the United States. The moons of opportunity, capability, and inclination just haven’t come into alignment, but that hasn’t stopped us from experiencing some fascinating places vicariously. And at a safe distance from spiders.

Once More….

*ceci n’est pas un avion

The photo above is not the actual Boeing 777 carrying Lindsay from Los Angeles to Hong Kong on her way to Thailand, at least as far as we know, but it might as well be. Three years ago we were waiting to hear that she had arrived safely in Africa. Now, after getting her messages that she had arrived in LA from Boston and boarded her flight for Hong Kong, we have to wait about another twelve hours before we can reasonably expect to hear from her again.

With all three of our girls away, either at school, or way away, as in Asia for the next six months, we officially have an empty nest (just don’t tell the cats). This opens a new chapter, some of which I don’t expect to be markedly different from the previous, but which presents some of its own opportunities. I suspect it will take a little while for us to establish a new rhythm, a new pattern of life with mostly just the two of us again after more than twenty years with children of various sizes in the house.

Meanwhile, Lindsay has picked up her blog again, and we can expect to hear all kinds of interesting things about life, work, and travels in Thailand and other parts of southeast Asia.

Highlands Highlights

More Highlands highlights. I’m sure the photo, as amazing as it is, doesn’t do the real thing justice. Still, that I know someone who was there and actually stood there to take the photo makes it that much more real.

Waiting

Is it the hardest part? Sometimes, I guess, though dealing with what you’ve been waiting for may be harder, depending on what it is. Seems like we’re always waiting for something – the phone to ring, a letter (a what?), the outcome of an election, an occasion or holiday, or some other event – so you’d think that we’d always be in that tension. And so we probably are, though we experience it more acutely at certain times. Like after hitting the “submit” button on a college admissions application.

Now all we can do is wait.

Shameless Plug

For our middle daughter’s study-abroad blog and her most recent post, Highlands Preview.

Shifting Gears

 

I’ve read a few blog and Facebook posts recently about the discernible shift in life’s patterns and nature’s patterns that come with the end of summer and the beginning of fall. Kids and teachers go back to school, it’s dark earlier in the evening and later in the morning, the days and nights get cooler, all that stuff. From what I’ve seen it seems to infect people with a sense of melancholy about the passage of time that spring and summer don’t.

In our own lives we’ve seen this same kind of seasonal shift, though it seemed to happen in some form of slow motion, a kind of gradual partial re-emptying of the nest, if you will. Our eldest flew back to Washington and her senior year on the 24th of August and our middle daughter left for a fall semester at the University of Glasgow on the 31st. Our youngest daughter and my wife, a teacher, both returned to school at about the same time. All of this combined to radically change the structure, pace, and feel of home life, though my work schedule really doesn’t change that much from one season to the next (except for budget season).

Getting back to the shift metaphor, it seems like we’ve come to the end of an extended leisurely cruise in sixth gear with the top down. Now it’s time to put the hard top on, put it in four-wheel drive, downshift, and power through until next spring. It’s not like there can’t be things to look forward to and enjoy, but it seems the coming seasons are much more of a long, hard slog than the rest of the year.

Zzzzzzzz……….. sknx! Hmph? What?!

Yes, I know it’s been a while, and it seems to have become a more or less constant condition. Still, the last few weeks have been busy, and I expect the coming summer to be full of its own comings and goings. A couple of comings and goings to note: middle daughter is home from college for the summer (yay!), eldest is moved into an apartment with roommates but we’ll still get to see her a couple of times this summer (yay, but also a harbinger of changes to come), and, though neither a coming nor a going, our youngest is itching for the school year to be over.

I did want to mention the end of a good friend’s blog, however. (Can’t link to it since it’s gone.) After more than a decade at it, my long-time friend Brian has decided to take a break from the grind of finding interesting and amusing things on the Internet to share, often with insightful comments about them. I’m not sure what, if any, plans he has to resume any kind of creative online presence but I appreciate both his efforts and the need to take a break.

Summertime will be full of softball tournaments, at least one college visit, side trip to Washington, motorcycle rides, hiking, gardening and grilling, family times, and, oh yeah, I still have to work at least some of the time. Maybe I will find time along the way to share; maybe you will, too.

Planning Ahead

Tomorrow morning: Coordinate roadside cleanup
108 hours from now: Drive to Baltimore
7 days from now: Drive home
9 weeks 2 days from now: 24th wedding anniversary
11 weeks from now: Tour Maine and New Brunswick by motorcycle
12 weeks from now: Turn 49 years old
4 months 1 week from now: Go to my second ever Rush concert
7 months 8 days from now: World ends, at least according to the Mayans.

Oh, right, there’s a presidential election in there somewhere. So much for ending on a high note.

College Tour III: Intermission

We capped off our February vacation week visits with tours at Yale and Wesleyan last Friday. Our drive down Thursday afternoon was nice, an unseasonably warm and sunny day. Dinner was at the Parthenon Diner in Branford, a local place with good food (including Greek specialties, as you might expect), great service, and reasonable prices.

By Friday morning it had turned gray and cold with a couple inches of slushy snow covering everything. Still, the trip down was good and the tours worthwhile. Quick impressions:

• Yale University: Go ahead, snicker, roll your eyes, whatever. I know, you’re thinking upper-yuppy snooty Ivy League school. Nice if you’re part of the 1% but, seriously, what about a school for us mere mortals? That might be one reaction, sure, but I have to tell you we all came away from our visits impressed with how unpretentious the place was for all its cachet and how much it truly seems to offer the fortunate 8% of applicants to its undergraduate class. We especially liked the residential college structure to university housing, combining academic advising and social life. I’m sure it’s common to many private (or in Great Britain, the counter-intuitively names “public”) schools, but the concept is even more familiar to readers of the Harry Potter series. Think Gryffindor at Hogwarts without so much the flowing robes and magic wands. Ticker: +2
• Wesleyan University: After our visit at Yale, even without a side trip to Louis’ Lunch or Modern Apizza (next time!), any school was going to have a hard time measuring up. Still, the short drive from New Haven to Middletown gave us time to move on mentally and be prepared for as fair an evaluation as we have given any of the schools so far. And, truthfully, Wesleyan fared well as a smaller institution, quite similar to Brandeis and Clark (at the same time being neither as quirky as Brandeis nor saddled with – fair or not – being in Worcester like Clark). The information session at Wesleyan could have been better but, at least in my case, I was suffering from some serious college visit fatigue. In the end, this one seemed to be a keeper on the list. Ticker: +1

So what does all this “ticker” stuff mean, anyway? As we’ve been going through these visits our daughter has been putting schools into one of three application categories – yes, maybe, and no. Simple and effective as a way of working through a list of 30-plus. Another way of measuring the success of a particular school in appealing to her would be the t-shirt index. So far, Johns Hopkins and Yale have merited t-shirts, with Brown only being the victim of a cash flow issue, otherwise she’d have one of those, too.