Letters for George: Sweetheart Visit

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Sweetheart Visit

Dear George,

We had our spring family get-together last weekend when our son J drove up from New Orleans with our granddaughter V and grandson L. The children are turning nine in September and continue to grow up at a steady pace. V had a new haircut which was quite “in”, and L had grown 7 inches in the past year. They successfully completed their first year in their new school (switching from Spanish-speaking to English-speaking). Their grandfather tested them on multiplication and spelling, and they are definitely whizzes. Here are some of the things that we did.

Love,

Dave

On the way up from New Orleans

Our group stopped at Mammoth Cave

That is my favorite spot on earth

J learned it was mapped by a slave

Saturday morning we went to the zoo

The elephant swam in his pool

We saw Fiona’s huge parents.

And the painted dogs were so cool

The children love eating at Skyline

They each had a junior three-way

Chili and cheese is addictive

The energy lasts a full day

From Skyline we went down to Graeter’s

Our street is so good for ice cream

The children lapped up their lemon sorbet

I think they had found their true dream

The children like to search in our attic

They find all this interesting stuff

V picked a pair of dolls to bring home

L seemed to think two were enough

Donna came by for a visit

She brought fresh rugula to share

V showed her all of her animals

Donna thought the children so fair

Our Father’s Day brunch was at Big Boy

Bacon and eggs and French toast

We had two fathers in our family group

And both enjoyed it the most

The Museum Center had costumes from Star Wars

Chewbaca, Yoda, Darth Vader

The costumes were fantastic and elegant

Lord Sith was clearly the nadir

Later we drove to the Valley Thrift

It’s the top of our local thrift stores

V picked out the best bathrobe ever

While I bought a few dinosaurs

We all went for pizza at Deweys

Plain for L, mushrooms for V

The grownups had the Bronx Bomber

We ate every slice but for three

We walked down the street to Toku Baru

J gave the kids twelve bucks to spend

V picked out an incense burner

And L chose spinners by the end

Monday we went to the Sunlite Pool

Though I got us lost on the way

The children loved all the sprays and slides

Coney Island was such a fine day

Katja prepared a filet mignon dinner

It was the very last step of their stay

Our sweethearts set off at nine p.m.

Thirteen hours, they stopped on the way

All of these visits are wonderful

And all of them wind up too quick

The children grow more every single time

Keeping up with the youth is some trick

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MARCH 2024 HOLIDAYS

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Sun., Mar. 10. Daylight Saving Time starts. Clocks move forward one hour at 2 a.m. // Sun., Mar. 17. St. Patrick’s Day. Celebrating one of Ireland’s patron saints and Irish-American culture in the U.S. // Wed., Mar. 20. Spring Equinox. One of two annual equinoxes in which the length of night and day are nearly equal. // Thurs., Mar. 21. World Poetry Day. Promoting linguistic expression through poetry. // Sat., Mar. 23. Purim starts. A Jewish holiday which commemorates Jews being saved from extermination in Persia. // (Source: wincalendar.com)

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I have one pair of prescription glasses for reading, one for distance (driving, movies). I also have a dozen $1.00 reading glasses from the Dollar Store so I can keep my prescription pair permanently on our dining room table. Of course I lost my distance glasses two years ago. I’ve been sure they was somewhere around the house, but I’ve scoured everywhere. Last week I got ready to go to my writers group and picked out a pair of reading glasses from my bedside table. One had orange and purple rims, one green and yellow, and one dark brown. I chose the conservative dark brown pair. At my group I tried reading with them, but everything was blurry. I was sure they weren’t Katja’s glasses, but they certainly weren’t my reading glasses. Back home Katja suggested that maybe they were my distance glasses. I looked out the window, and the house down the block was in clearer focus. So my lost distance glasses have been sitting next to my bed for the past two years.

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Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1888. His father, a prosperous businessman, sent him to Milton Academy and Harvard where he excelled. At Harvard Eliot studied philosophy, earning a master’s degree under George Santayana. He then studied linguistics, poetry, and philosophy at the Sorbonne and at Oxford University, settling in England after his studies, working as a banker, and writing poetry. Eliot published his first masterpiece, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, in 1917, and he followed it with “The Waste Land” in 1922, a long poem that had tremendous impact on Western literature. Andrew Lloyd Webber adapted Eliot’s 1939 children’s book, “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” into the stage musical “Cats”, one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1948, Eliot died in 1965. (Tessitore, Extraordinary American Writers, 2004)

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We watched the total eclipse on TV, not wanting to risk our retinas. I read “An Ode to April” at my writers’ group and watched episode 1 of Ripley on Netflix (too scary for Katja). I went to the fitness center and did FaceTime with Donna. Katja and I ate out at Dewey’s (pizza and salad), Izzie’s (pastrami Reuben), and Lil Goodies (softserve sundaes). We took the tax info to our accountant, too late and requiring an extesion. Katja went to the Hair Salon. We wound up the week with Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office, a chilling PBS drama.