This past week absolutely flew by—kind of like a jet streaking across the summer blue sky and leaving the white trail behind as its only visible proof that it really happened. I think it was the summer visitors that did it—making time speed past even faster! And in my house, I didn’t think that was possible, time flying any faster.
This old house of mine with its three generations has a normal population of eight: Grandma and Grandpa (my Mom and Dad), my husband and myself, and four of our six children (the other two children, the Marine and the high school teacher, boost the population to 10 only in a blue moon now, when work schedules and leaves line up just right). At any rate, this week the numbers and time flashed by. It was definitely a case of the more the merrier!
All my visitors had come from afar. Well, sort of “afar,” it was afar in my book anyway. Those that came by car had to spend anywhere from 4 ½ hours to 6 hours to get here and those coming by plane had at least a two hour flight and then from half hour to two hours tacked on to that for the car ride from the airport here.
The folks visiting here didn’t necessarily know each other but they all knew us and there was no special event that caused the visit, it was all pretty much a coincidence that everyone arrived on our doorstep at the same time. But you know what? It was all great fun and I loved it!
My Dad’s youngest brother (from Massachusetts) and my son’s best friend from our old town (near Chicago) were here for the week. My sister from Michigan was here for a couple days and the Chicago friend’s Mom and Dad were here for a couple days. And smack dab in the middle of the week, another son, who had spent a few days at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, at a leadership/baseball camp, flew home. Well, he didn’t exactly fly home, the airport is two hours north of home, so there was a car trip up and back involved in that to fetch him. I didn’t fetch the Naval Academy son, my husband did, and that was a tag team effort if I ever saw one! I walked up the porch steps after arriving home from a grand let’s-go-someplace-awesome-on-Wednesday adventure just as my husband walked down the porch steps after having pulled double duty at home–working (his office is now in our house) and looking after Grandma. Earlier that day, I had gathered up my six fellow Wednesday adventurers and lit out for the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, about an hour’s drive away.
My Dad (a WWII veteran), his brother (served in the Air Force), my 15 year old and his best friend, and my two youngest were my fellow Wednesday adventurers. That museum, we all decided, is amazing. There is so much to see—way more than what we could fit in. Two or three trips back might be enough to get it all in! there are three huge hangars on the museum complex tracing the history of flight, beginning with the Wright brothers and their bicycle inventions all the way through space travel. And we only had this one afternoon. We squeezed as much in as possible and I think we managed to squeeze in some impossible too!
The very next day we were flying around some more as my Dad’s brother had to catch his 11:15 flight back to Massachusetts. The airport for this was only a half hour drive away and I was only driving my Dad and his brother so it was deemed a medium adventure in contrast to the grand museum adventure the day before. My Dad, who had not been to an airport in quite some time, remarked at how many cars were parked in the parking deck, how many people fly! The place was nearly 100 percent full. People, I told him, love to fly. They fly and time flies. It all goes by so fast—summer visitors, airports, airplanes, fun things, and good times. Time flies—it just does. Nothing to be done about it except to enjoy every bit of it.
