family vacation
I’m back home from a family trip to the old homestead in very rural Indiana. I’ve been there once before, in the winter. In the warmer sunlight of early October, it’s even more beautiful.
I love seeing the parts of the family that you have to go there to see. The whole area is breathtakingly beautiful – the rolling hills and trees and fields and farms. It has the best of the catskills and farm country all in one place, next to a huge man-made reservoir.
My grandfather is there, recovering from surgery, so every day we’d drive the (almost) hour into Ohio to spend a few hours with him. It’s something we enjoyed as much as he did, even though we’d all prefer hanging out at home instead of a hospital room.
I also learned some interesting lessons about spending lots of time with immediate family members who you haven’t lived with for many years. No matter how old you are, you’ll still be treated like their little boy. Sometimes it makes you feel nice, sometimes it makes you want to scream. I experienced both.
Now I’m back to work, which has now presented some challenges of its own. I’ve now got lots of work to catch up on, and some challenges I’ll elaborate on another time. Sigh. When is it going to get even a *little* bit easier?