I failed to have everything ready by Thursday afternoon, so we ended up leaving Friday morning for DeKalb directly from Indiana. After dropping my ES off at his friend's house, I took the little boys to Hopkins Park pool. I was not surprised that the first person I ran into was Dunia! Dunia and her daughter, Roni, were always fixtures at the pool for the last few years we lived in DeKalb. I think our conversation spooked my baby because he was in tears and clinging to me desperately.
What did surprise me was how quickly my MS got into the water. When he was not quite two, the summer we moved, he would actually waddle over to the edge and climb in all by himself (with floaties on, of course). Last year, when we visited, he recognized the length of time he had been away from a pool and was actually afraid of the water for a bit. This time, he climbed in by himself and began to show me all the things he used to be able to do in the pool (spin around in circles, blow bubbles in the water, float and put his head under). At one point he said, "This is just like that other pool!" I had to remind him that it IS that other pool, we just can't go to it so easily any more.
We had a wonderful time at the pool and lasted a whole three hours. The weather was perfect. It was a bit overcast, so the pool wasn't crowded. The water was a comfortable temperature. I saw quite a few kids from the school where I used to work. Last year, many of the kids came running up to say "You're back." This time, only one actually approached me (Puja), but the others did acknowledge me when I spoke to them. My MS took an interest in Hunter and wanted to follow her all over the pool. After the first hour, my YS seemed less reserved and he walked all over the baby pool area (he was only sad that he couldn't go down the slide, since I couldn't set him at the top and trust MS to give him a gentle push only when I got to the bottom). If it had been a sunnier day, we might have run into more old friends, but we also might have had to leave sooner because of YS's sensitivity to the heat and sun.
We tried to stop by to see my MS's old babysitter, but it looked like they weren't home. I stopped by to see the student I used to work with in Dekalb and was pleased to see that she was home. We had dinner at Baker's Square because MS wanted macaroni and cheese. On our way out the door, I ran into Paula, who used to live across the hall from us when we lived in the apartments next to Hopkins Park (this was 11 years ago). She did a double take because my YS looks an awful lot like my ES did at this age. Of course, since I had two with me, she realized that they were merely younger siblings (her own son must be in his late teens now). It was fun to unexpectedly run into her.
It is always wonderful staying with our friends, the Mills, because they make us feel right at home. We visited for a bit (they had just been to a retired officer's encampment with my parents) and then headed to bed (both boys slept through the night without waking, but they did wake too early - at 5 a.m. and I had to tell them to go back to sleep for a bit longer).
We had told ES we would pick him up between 10 and 11. As I drove through our old neighborhood, I took in several details. Two of our neighbors were having garage sales, but I didn't stop because I was feeling a time crunch. In front of our old house, we noticed two girl's bikes and wondered if our landlord had a change in renters again (since the woman who moved in after us had no children). We also noticed that our landlord lost his very large tree from the front of his yard.
Of course, ES wasn't there. He and Michael had taken a bike ride to visit another friend, Brett. I had to call him on his cell phone (thank goodness, it was that easy to resolve). I took advantage of those extra moments and dashed off to Aldi to try to return a pair of shoes I had purchased one month ago at our Aldi in Indiana. I was worried that the return policy would expire. Here's the good news. When the clerk rang up the return she gave me twice what I paid. I pointed this out to her, but she said she had to give me back that amount because that is what her register is expecting (something about our Aldi being in a different district). Moreover, I not only profited some money that morning in my visit to Aldi, I also ran into a former teaching colleague, Darla Massier.
It seemed like a blitz trip to DeKalb. We weren't even there for 24 hours. I didn't see nearly as many old friends as I had hoped. However, it was nice to merely run into a few by happenstance.
By the time we arrived in Janesville, we discovered the other large event going on that day. Traffic was blocked as a large parade of motorcycles sped past us. We estimated that we had seen 1000 bikers. My brother said we missed the first half, then, because there were 2000 bikers. Ha!
I was almost wishing I had been able to attend sans children! There was a lovely slide presentation. I saw snippets of it, but only in between chasing my two whirling dervishes. Plus, my ES was hungry and didn't think he'd be satisfied with the appetizers (I failed to point out to him that if he had been ready at my instructed departure time, we would have had time to grab lunch), so I gathered the three boys and took them away for a quick bite. When we returned, I determined to leave ES in charge of MS and YS in the nursery, so I could spend some time talking with the other guests and especially with my parents and my aunt and uncle. ES didn't last too long (perhaps I had twenty minutes to visit), but soon they began water balloon activities and kick ball, so we headed outside with other children at the celebration.
I do find that when I attend anything by myself with the boys, I feel completely scatter-brained (shifting focus from what is going on to, o.k., where is ES?, where is MS?, where is YS? - they never seem to all three be in the same place). At one point, I lost tabs on MS and was becoming quite frantic. My brother began to help me look and someone said, "is that his head out there by a bush?" He had gone outside and was standing near the nursery window among the bushes.
When it came time to leave, I stopped at a special table to buy a gold Childhood Cancer Awareness Button. I left the suggested donation amount and grabbed up my things. Only later did I realize that I had scooped up an extra button (more on that in the next post ).
We arrived safely back at Grandma's and had a pleasant visit with Grandpa and Daddy for Father's Day. My husband's brother did bring ice-cream (but a homemade batch, instead of an ice cream cake) and his daughter had made a cake, so I was glad I hadn't bothered with a cake.
After we returned on Monday, my parents came for a visit, staying until Thursday morning. We had a wonderful time visiting. They have recently purchased an old 8 mm film projector (at an estate sale for $5 - one of the benefits of living in FL, I'm guessing) and are in the process of transferring all of our old family movies onto DVDs. It was fun to sit and watch some of those old family vacations. We watched the one to Salt Lake City, the Grand Canyon, Disney World and the large sand hill run in California. The sand hill one is particularly memorable because each of us kids had a different approach to going down. My younger sister, Dawn, was too young to go up the hill, so she stayed on the beach with my mother and meticulously brushed any offending sand from the soles of her feet. My oldest brother, David, went down rolling sideways. I would take a few steps and then sit. My older brother, Mark, decided to just run down at full speed. All was well until he ran between two men, then he was a maze of arms and legs and mouthfuls of sand. Of course, when we were younger, we would force visiting Salvation Army cadets to watch those movies with us and my dad would make the film go forward and backward as we watched Mark's demise over and over again.
We also had a lovely time walking and playing at the park. My parents took us all out for dinner on Wednesday night to a Chinese buffet. However, my favorite aspect of our visit (besides watching my parents read countless books to my boys) were the hours we spent reminiscing and telling old stories. My mother often says that I am her memory. She doesn't remember all these stories, until one of her kids begins to retell them. I can remember my nieces and nephews always begging me to tell our family stories (David and collecting glass bottles to turn in for money at the confectioner's; David and I playing our instruments at the Christmas kettles at the Famous Barr store, when I was only 10 - he was just at the other door, in case I needed him; Mark and Stella's spaghetti; my scar stories; my tree story; Dawn and the canteen pickup; Tim and a few accidents, etc...). It is also interesting to hear the varying shades of memory as a story is retold. My mother will remember something in just a bit different detail.
I'm supposing that is one reason blogging is such a good thing. It gives one a chance to set things down as they happen. I'm sure there are still a variety of perspectives. For example, until my parents came here for their visit, they didn't know the reason I had run out of the building at Amelia's celebration so suddenly. They thought that one of the little boys had run out in front of a car in the parking lot. Close, but really, it was that my MS was sitting atop someone else's car in the parking lot. A couple were entering the building as I chastened him, saying "You should never climb on someone else's car! That is someone else's property!" The couple quipped something like this: "Yes, by all means, if he is going to climb a car, it should only be your own vehicle." I was mortified. They were amused. Let's hope that the car's owner had the perspective of blissful ignorance!
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