Winter Visit

Thursday, February 6th, 2025

I returned 2 days ago from my winter visit to Michigan. There I spent a couple of days with my son and his girlfriend and her 2 children. I also spent a few days with my friends.

I have 2 very good friends that are sisters. They are immigrants from India who I worked with for several years. I was so impressed by these 2 young ladies, having come half way around the world to a new country. They worked hard in my companies IT department as fulltime employees, while also attending Lawrence Technological University as post graduates. They both had an insatiable appetite to learn, and were very mature for their age. You could tell that they had been raised by very good parents. I stayed for a couple of days at each of their homes, visiting with them and their husbands, catching up on recent happenings. Both are good cooks, and the cuisine was a welcome change from my own cooking in my trailer.

I also stayed with my friend Cheng and her family and enjoyed an evening with a “real” Chinese meal. It was not the usual fair that you would get at a local Chinese restaurant and was very good. Cheng was also a fellow worker with my last employer, who I had trained in the skill of Database Administration. It was an easy task, as she is an extremely intelligent person. Like the two sisters from India, she always enjoyed learning new things.

I also spent 2 days with my older son Zach, his significant other, and her 2 children. Normally Zach has Sundays and Mondays off work and Mondays are quiet for him as the children are at school, 2nd grade and kindergarten. Their mother also works at the school. But this particular Monday, a Snow Day had been called, as fog and ice made it difficult to run the buses. So, I got to spend 2 days with the children instead of 1. I had a young girl on one side of me, her brother on the other side, and their full grown husky, Kalinin in the middle, all demanding my attention at the same time. It was wonderful.

Despite the cold weather, when it came time to fly back to Phoenix, I knew I would be missing them all. The conversations, meals we shared, games played, and time spent were all a marked contrast to the quiet months I spend camped in the desert.

This trip came at a good time. One of the problems with spending week after week in the quiet of the desert, is that you sometimes wake up after a dream, and question how you ended up in your situation. What decisions or events in your life lead to where you are now? This had happened to me a couple weeks before the trip. I had spent too much time thinking. Back 24 years ago, in February, I had found myself raising my 2 sons as a single parent. Of course, that was a big shock, and a very busy time, working a fulltime job and then adding the responsibilities that had previously been shared with a partner. That lasted for the next 12 years until my sons were old enough to be out on their own. Now after all that time, things have slowed down enough that I was thinking back to that time and even before. What happened? What did I do wrong that led to that situation after the wreckage of 2 marriages? Obviously, dwelling on those thoughts and all the unanswered questions about them is not a good thing to keep going over and over in your mind. My trip gave me something to snap me out of that. If you ever go on an extended trip around the country, or travel abroad for long periods, be cognizant of the fact that it will give you a lot of time to think, sometimes too much. Remember, you are the author of the book of your life. Turn the page.

I like J.R.R. Tolkien quotes, as you may be able to tell from earlier writings. For this, he has one that fits:

How do you move on? You move on when your heart finally understands that there is no turning back.