Good to be Home

It’s hard to believe the midpoint of 2019 is just a couple of weeks away. I’ve read that time seems to move more rapidly as we age and it seems like this year is just flying by. Pam and I have taken two major trips this spring since early May and that doesn’t include my nearly three- month sojourn in Texas and arthroscopic knee surgery for her.

Being home is about familiarity and comfort in surroundings one knows. the comfort of your own bed, knowing where things are in the kitchen and the channels available on the satellite. It’s about relaxing on the deck behind our house when the rain stops and sitting on the front porch watching the world go on our street when rain is falling.

I arrived home from El Paso on April 5, and needed a week or so to rest and recover from the nearly 2,000-mile trip. Another major trip loomed on the horizon in mid-May. My nephew Daniel, my younger brother Tim’s son, was graduating from Boston University in mid-May. Pam, Brian and I planned to drive the 500 miles to Boston on Thursday, May, 16, but Pam’s doctor wanted to do a pre-operation checkup and the only available appointment was that day.

So, we packed up the Honda CRV and left on Friday morning. We would be taking the New York Thruway and the Massachusetts Turnpike to Boston, so I signed up for an E-Z Pass transponder and stuck it on my windshield behind the rearview mirror. That proved to be a wise decision, because I think we saved probably 15-20 minutes in each direction by not having to wait in line in addition to the discount on the tolls.

We arrived in Boston about 12 hours later and found our AirBnb in the suburb of Framingham. It was a decent-sized apartment above a garage and the nightly rate was about half what the hotels and motels in the Boston area were charging.

Saturday morning, we drove 25 minutes to Brookline where Daniel had an apartment. Parking is extremely tight throughout the campus area, but his apartment had several visitor spaces behind the building. We had lunch with Daniel, his parents, his girlfriend Nichol and three of her relatives at a nice neighborhood restaurant about a 10-minute walk from his apartment.

After lunch, we walked to the boyhood home of President John F. Kennedy nearby on a tree-lined street. Some of us went on the tour after watching a short video about JFK’s life. He lived there for the first ten years of his life, before his family moved to a larger house a few blocks away.

After the tour, we went back to Daniel’s place to hang out for a while. He had left to go on campus for his commencement ceremonies. Daniel is extremely bright and decided to pursue a double major in both music composition and physics, and he finished both degrees in four years—very impressive.

The two ceremonies were only an hour-and-a-half apart and on opposite sides of campus. So, we watched him receive his music composition degree at the BU Tennis Center and he literally sprinted off the stage and out the door with the rest of us in tow.

He and his mom decided to try to walk to the other ceremony while the rest of us waited for the campus shuttle bus. Fortunately, the bus appeared quickly and all of us made it to his second ceremony in the science center just as it was beginning.

After that ceremony and a reception, we had 45 minutes to get to Symphony Hall in Boston to hear the Boston Pops play a program saluting the year 1969. Daniel bought the tickets to thank us for coming and the concert was a delight. Because the Red Sox had a home game at nearby Fenway Park, the traffic was atrocious, but we made the concert with time to spare.

After the concert, we took an Uber back to Daniel’s apartment. When the Uber driver picked us up he asked, “Where to?” My reply was: “About 500 miles west.” I had had enough of the traffic and congestion of Boston.

It was after 11pm and we hadn’t eaten anything since lunch except for the finger food available at a reception after Daniel’s physics degree ceremony. We headed back to the apartment in Framingham and, thank goodness for Google Maps, we found an open Wendy’s drive through and took the food back to our apartment.

Sunday, was about as hectic. We planned to attend the general university commencement at the BU soccer stadium. Boston University doesn’t have a football team, but the stadium was big enough to accommodate probably 15,000 people who filled the stands along with several thousand more seated on folding chairs on the artificial turf field.

When we awoke Sunday morning, it was raining and we found a Panera for lunch before heading back into Boston. We left the restaurant about an hour before the ceremony for the 25-minute drive. However, the rain slowed the traffic on the expressway, and it was a struggle to find parking anywhere near the stadium, so we arrived about 45 minutes after the beginning of the ceremony.

Fortunately, the rain stopped by then and we did get to hear the featured speaker and see the students throw their caps in the air after the degrees were conferred. By the end of the program, the rain was gone and the sun came out. We walked back to Daniel’s apartment and eventually went to dinner in nearby Brookline.

We had planned to spend Monday sightseeing in Boston, but more rain was forecast and the three of us decided to head back home. After two days chasing Daniel around campus and the hectic schedule, we were pretty tired. The parking problems and Boston traffic made me more than ready to get back to Ohio.

About a week after we got home, Pam had arthroscopic surgery on her left knee. It had been bothering her since last fall and, after a couple of rounds of physical therapy, she went to a sports medicine physician. He found a tear in her meniscus and repaired it. We were only at the surgery center for about three hours before I took her home. She went though the recovery process fairly well and was up and walking without crutches the third day after the surgery.

Our next trip was about three weeks after the Boston journey. Pam’s first cousin once removed Henry (the son of her cousin) was to be married in Nashville on June 8^th. Originally, Pam, her brother and her niece planned to leave the Monday before the wedding to explore old historic houses in Kentucky. I planed to drive separately to meet them in Nashville on Thursday night.

However, because of Pam’s surgery we decided she needed an extra day of rest, so we left on Tuesday and met her brother in Lexington, KY, that night. While they explored a couple of houses on Wednesday, I drove down to Richmond, KY to have lunch with my first boss after college.

Way back in 1970, Fred Kolloff hired me to be on the staff of the Division of TV and Radio at Eastern Kentucky University. We have kept in touch over the years and had a delightful time reminiscing and discussing the current state of television. Fred is a TV history junkie who has travelled to Hollywood a few times to witness production of numerous TV shows. He told me he and his wife also have been on ocean cruises sponsored by the Turner Classic Movies network.

After lunch, I drove around the EKU campus and out to the first apartment Pam and I had a couple of miles outside Richmond. The drive triggered a lot of memories and our four years in Kentucky were a good start for my career and our marriage.

Thursday, Pam and I went to Nashville and on Friday, we met another of Pam’s cousins and toured the Belmont Mansion at Belmont University and had lunch at the Magic Mushroom, a pub in downtown Franklin, TN.

That weekend we stayed at the Drury Inn in Franklin, an impressive 12-story hotel right off I-65 about 15 miles south of Nashville. Each Drury hotel has a happy hour from 5:30 to 7 pm each evening where guests can partake of an extensive complimentary selection of appetizers and get two free drinks. Both nights, I had a couple of Jack Daniels whiskeys on the rocks, so it was a good way to end a day of sightseeing.

While Pam and I were on this journey, Brian was in Cannes, France, attending the annual Midem Conference, an international meeting of music producers. He was in France for about a week and flew back to the U.S. on Friday. He then flew from New York City to Nashville on Saturday morning. I picked him up at the Nashville airport and we arrived back at the hotel in time to have the breakfast buffet with Pam.

After we ate, Brian went to the room for a couple of hours sleep while Pam and I hung out reading in the lobby. Later that afternoon we headed to the church for the wedding of “Team Jenry” the name Henry and his spouse Jennifer have given themselves.

As with our visit to Boston, rain was an important factor. Immediately after the ceremony, as folks lined up for photos with the wedding party outside the church, it started to pour. Everyone hustled back into the church to take the photos inside.

The rain continued as we arrived at the reception site, a historic house and park in nearby Brentwood. There was a large tent erected near the house with food serving lines at the edges of the tent. Unfortunately, the bar area was on the other side of the house, so you had to go out in the rain to go through the house to get to get a beverage.

Because no one wanted to go outside the tent into the rain, it was very crowded and noisy inside. Also, the lack of any wind made the humidity even worse. I had to walk a couple of hundred yards in a pouring rain after parking the car to get to the tent. I never really got dry the whole evening.

The next morning, we went to the house of the Henry’s father for a casual brunch before we headed back to Ohio. I had some good conversations with Pam’s cousins and friends of the bride and groom because the setting was more relaxed.

The drive home was uneventful except for a heavy downpour as we rode through Louisville. Because of Pam’s knee, she rode in the front seat the whole time. When Brian was driving, I rode in cramped quarters in the back seat. I also had indigestion from the weekend, so I was even more uncomfortable. What a relief it was to arrive home at 11:30 on Sunday night.

Our weather here still continues to be iffy with the pattern of a good day usually followed by a couple of rainy ones. Yesterday, the temperature was close to 80 and I sat on the deck relaxing as a couple of deer and then a baby groundhog grazed in our back yard.

They were enjoying themselves and so was I. It felt great to be home and I don’t want to leave anytime soon.