It's been a busy summer. Two weeks after graduation, I started my first teaching job, so my daily schedule has been: up at 5, go to the Y to work out, then school, then a few hours at my office, then errands, home around 8ish, walk the dog, eat dinner, and crash. As I said to a friend recently, "Sometimes I've just got to jump into a crucible to test whether it's hot enough."
Somewhere in there I managed to get to Oregon for my annual "I'm not going to do a damned thing all week but float in the pool with my book, and I'm only getting out to play cards with Grandma" vacation. And my Aunt Mary died, which meant a trip home to Chicago (yes, I still think of it as "home", just as Oregon is "home" and Dallas is "home"... home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.**) I can't say much about my Aunt's death yet. It's too soon, and death is a loaded subject for me anyhow. It is, for the moment, sufficient to say that she was my second mom. But the funeral was lovely, in its own way; everything well-chosen and appropriate. As I wrote to my dad, the only fault I think she would have found with anything was that she would have said there weren't enough sweets on the buffet table back at the house. She would have rummaged around in the kitchen for a minute and pulled out two coffee cakes that no one knew were there. The nice thing was that Cole and I got to reconnect with family we hadn't seen in ages, and in the afternoon we all sat under the tent in the backyard listening to Johnny play the accordion.
Which, with help, I managed to get on video.
I'll post a photo or two of my Aunt later.
**Robert Frost. Look it up.
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