Our last summer weekend was made
special by a quick Friday-Saturday visit from our granddaughter
Leslie from Nashville. Somehow her guitar had ended up at Woodsong
for her to avoid taking it on a plane, and now she needed it. I was
delighted she was coming to claim it with time for me to catch up
with her life. It is invigorating to talk to young adults whose lives
are full of activities, goals, and with years left ahead to achieve
the goals. I am in the stage of life where I am crossing off goals
and ambitions—not because they have been achieved but because they
are no longer possible or sometimes even desirable. (For example, I
always wanted to travel to Europe. It was a lifetime goal. Although
I still wish I had done it, I would not now want to have to be at the
airport at such and such a time. I no longer want to walk in strange
foreign cities. Nor in American cities for that matter. I do not
have that kind of energy or strong legs anymore.) But I love
listening to stories my grandchildren tell me about their busy lives.
I love visualizing their travels and
their careers and their fixing up of apartments and first homes.
Vicarious living through real live people is much more satisfying
than vicarious living through reading although that too is very
pleasant. And, of course, if those real live people are ones you
have watched from babyhood on, the interest and pleasure is even
greater. So Gerald, Leslie,and I talked and heard about Mike's new
career—he couldn't come because he is on day shift right now with
the Nashville police. We heard about their plans for the renovation
of the three upstairs rooms they have really not used in the three
years they have lived in their first purchased home. I loved hearing
about their interactions with kids driving in their neat
neighborhood, close to heart of Nashville.
After staying up visiting a little
later than usual, Gerald went on to bed Friday night, and Leslie was
kind enough to continue our talking, which we also did on Saturday
morning. She knew I would be interested in her planned trip to New
York City to sing someone's song there at a conference. And, of
course, I liked hearing about yet another interaction with someone
connected to Hamilton. I believe it was the guy playing
Thomas Jefferson who came to Nashville for some reason or other and
she got to sing with him. And she knew I would be thrilled that the
young man from Cairo, who was in the New York production, will now
be playing the lead in Chicago. I am hoping on one of her trips to
her hometown of Freeport, that she can get tickets for the Chicago
show. Then she will have another story to tell me.
We both slept late Saturday morning and
had breakfast coffee together as we talked. I fixed her one of our
customary one-second eggs with her toast and told her to teach Mike
so he can have an egg when she needs to sleep late on Saturdays and
he is just coming in from work when he is on the night shift.
All too soon she had to get back on the
road even though I had a new chicken recipe (pineapple marinade)
cooking in the oven. Mike would be off work at 3 and they would go
to lunch together then. She would use the driving time back to
Nashville to think about the worship service songs she was to lead
the next day.
I am grateful for today's young adults
and love it when they share their modern ways of living with me. One
reason I am not as fearful of the future as some are is because I
respect and admire today's young adults. We are leaving some big
problems for them to solve, and Gerald is concerned about that and so
am I. I wish our generation had solved more problems—especially
the national debt. Yet I suspect the newer adults will do better with
those problems than we have.
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