Home!

Please endure my blogging about my travels for a little bit longer; I’m not quite done with it yet.

I made it safely home at about quarter past midnight this morning.  I had an absolutely amazing last day with Bo and Seester, which made the coming home that much more bittersweet.  For all that I missed my husband and my girls - especially as I was surrounded by my friends’ families - it was some kind of difficult to say goodbye.

I started the day with Bo and his family in church.  I was eager to go - I know that this new community is important to my friend and I wanted to share a little bit in his “everyday” life (as opposed to his “special occasion, friend coming to visit” life).  I was greeted warmly by everyone I was introduced to, and I found the experience of the service to be, well, let’s just say it was interesting.  The homily was about seeking out those who feel they’re not worthy to come to church - to go out and invite people to “come to God’s table.”  At one point, the minister used the word “heathen” and I thought, “HOW did he know I was coming?!”  Seriously, though, I can see why Bo and Lea like this place; everyone is warm and friendly, the services are stuffed to bursting with music, and the message, as far as I was able to tell from one experience, is welcoming and inclusive.  The experience was enough to reinforce for me that I don’t really belong in a Christian community, but I’ll talk more about that later.

We picked the boys up from their activities after the service was over, and Bo’s little one gave me the project he’d done in Sunday school - a little flower made of yarn glued to a bit of sandpaper:

Isn’t it beautiful?  I’ve got to reinforce some of the glue - it came apart a little in my purse - and probably put it on the wall of my desk.

After church, we all piled back in the mini-van and headed for Seester’s house for what turned out to be some of the yummiest breakfast I’ve had in a good long while.  She’d put together some fruit, a French toast souffle (seriously!) and a casserole that consisted of grits, maple sausage and cheese.  YUM-MEE!  I had several servings of each and am very much looking forward to getting the recipes for these concoctions.

The weather hadn’t yet begun to do the clearing and warming that we’d been promised, so we retired to the couches and sat around and chatted some more.  Seester’s husband and son returned from their manly bonding rituals in the woods while we were finishing breakfast, so I got to meet the rest of her family.  Meester Seester is one funny man - he’s got a back door sense of humor that I really appreciate and I spent the better part of the early afternoon laughing.

Finally, we spotted some sun peeking out from behind the clouds, so we decided to seize the opportunity and head out the the Botanical Gardens.  I’m SO glad we did.  Even though there wasn’t a whole lot in bloom - I mostly got to see a lot of pansies and tulips - what was in bloom was gorgeous.  Observe:

and

This was really the feather in the cap.  I learned that this dogwood is a little over 100 years old and was the object of much care and affection as it was transplanted, at great cost and effort, into the gardens from the path of a road-widening project in the mid-90’s.  Really?  I would say that whatever cost and effort was involved was well worth it:

Once our tour of the gardens was over and I had had a chance to visit the gift shop for ladybug and frog pins for the girls, we piled back in the van and brought sleepy and hungry little boys (and a tired Mama - thank you Lea!) back home, then Seester, Bo and I headed for the airport.  We parked and headed to the airport bar where we had some appetizers and sodas while we waited for my flight time.  None of us wanted to say goodbye, and Bo was trying very hard, I think, to deny, right up until the very end, that we were going to have to part.

I’m glad we parted when we did, though.  I heard my flight being called as I was loading all my crap on to the x-ray machine.  Grateful that the decorative metal filigrees on the sleeves of my sweater didn’t set off the metal detectors (and cause me to be delayed for pat-downs and interrogations), I collected my stuff, put my shoes back on, and literally walked right on to the plane.

The trip between Alabama and DC was FAR rougher than I was anticipating, and there was a little bit in the middle there where I had to stop what I was doing (watching West Wing episodes on my iPod - I LOVE that I can do that… thank you, Mr. Chili!) to breathe and meditate and hand myself over to the Universe.  We must have crested through some pretty intense weather pattern (or, perhaps, the boundary between two), because we were bouncing around pretty good for a while there.  I don’t like that, and was very happy to be on the ground in DC.

When I got there, I had to walk something like 40 paces to get to my next gate.  Of course, those 40 paces took me through a crowd at another gate who, if they’d had access to torches and pitchforks, would have been a real danger.  I couldn’t figure out quite what the problem was, but it was serious, and I was grateful at that moment for the TSA and its prohibitions against anything that can be used as a weapon in airplane terminals.  There were some seriously unhappy people over there, and I was glad that they weren’t going to be on MY plane.

As it was, the plane that was going to continue my trip to New England hadn’t arrived yet, so our departure time was delayed by about half an hour.  The pilots made up for that somehow - the copilot came on and mentioned that they were in talks with air-traffic to see if they could cut a corner off of our trip through upstate New York - because we landed just about when I was hoping we would (which was still a little too late for my liking, but time zones will do that to a person).  I collected my stuff, walked out of the terminal and on to a shuttle bus, found my car (which was more than could be said for the couple on the bus who didn’t remember where they parked and were furiously pushing the buttons on their key fobs and looking for their flashing car) and drove home.  I arrived at my house - safe, sound, and more than a little tired - at about quarter past midnight.

I’ve got a lot more to say, but I’ve got to do some work right now; TCC’s term starts today, and I’ve got a public speaking class to kick off at 11:00.  Come back for more later - Ten Things Tuesday will be about my trip!