Home for Thanksgiving

Sloan and me sitting in front of a couple of large bison at a museum in Jackson, Wyoming


Our daughter, Sloan, is coming home next week for Thanksgiving. My sons, who live nearby, and their wives are coming too ... and my grandson.

We don't all get together that often, and usually when we do, I'm the one who has to instigate it.
It takes much shuffling of schedules, both work and recreational, to manage it ... and that kind of makes me sad. I always hoped that we would have the kind of family I had when I was growing up. One that just naturally comes together and hangs out pretty regularly ... but that's not to be.

Sloan is spending the year student teaching about two hours away. She is winding up her last few months of college and each time she comes home I feel like I'm living on borrowed time. She has made no secret to the fact that she wants to move to a larger city than the small town we live in ... and she's made no secret that she hopes that city is some distance from here.

Of course, I have no wish to clip her wings, her life is her own to manage. But how can I get past the fact that she's on her way out?  It wasn't something I did. I intended to have a career where I would move from place to place ... but I ended up back in my home town and here I've stayed.  Our family just doesn't move away ... not my brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews, sons ... nobody (well I do have an odd cousin who moved to California, but I don't usually count her).

I'm just wondering ... of all the people who feel they have to leave, why does it have to be my only daugher?

Autumn in the Smokies

A couple of weeks ago Tom and I went on the only vacation we're taking this year and went to the Smoky Mountains.  We rented this little cabin, which was tucked up in the hills.

We invited our son, daughter-in-law and grandson along with us and had a great time hanging out in the cabin. Nolan, our grandson, called it the "tiny house" and every time we left to go do something, he wanted to go back to the "tiny house" and the set of 20 new Matchbox cars we bought him to play with.

The colors of the trees were very nice, although living in Michigan we are used to seeing spectacular colors every fall.  We also saw several black bears, which was exciting, and some deer, which wasn't so exciting - we have bigger ones wandering through our yard at home nearly every day.

All in all it was a nice vacation, but not necessarily one that will go down in the memory books. I miss not going out west. The Smoky Mountains just seemed like big hills covered with trees. There wasn't much exciting to see and everything there was to see, Tom has seen it several times already since he has gone there for photography workshops a couple times.

It's a lot more fun when we go to new places and discover things together. Then I don't feel like the tourist who knows nothing and he the tour guide who has done it all already.