Our Last Summer Visitor

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.