July 18: Philly, Relatives, and Memories

We are in the final hours of driving home after a week in the Philadelphia area seeing Grammy and Granddad, two uncles, Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop, many cousins, and Grandma and Grandpa! Grandma and Grandpa just happened to be traveling through Philly at the same exact time we were having an outdoor dinner with Carl’s cousin and her family. I always marvel at how such a trip can be on the horizon as something we are eagerly anticipating for so long, and then it finally arrives and is over in the blink of an eye. We had many wonderful moments and the usual challenging times. The challenges are mainly that Sarah and I seem to only have conflict between us because almost all of her time is spent with relatives until it is time for her to change course and she doesn’t welcome my message to that end. In turn I don’t have as much relaxed space for her whining and yelling. Multiple nights with her calling out from half-falling out of bed or a dream or needing fresh clothes due to her period didn’t help my sleep, and I’m sure a nightly dose or two of adrenaline isn’t conducive to my best relaxed parenting. Still, overall we had a very good time. 

Carl and I celebrated our 19th anniversary. Amy and Sarah sneakily made us cards the night before, after we tucked them into bed. Then, with Grammy’s help, they made us a surprise cake, referring to it as cooked cucumber so we wouldn’t suspect anything.

Grammy found a wooden house toy with different locks, keys, and doorbells that Sarah loved. Amy enjoyed making Lego cupcakes and teaching Grammy (and later Mom-Mom) to play Tacocat Spelled Backwards. Granddad told us about his invisible dog Fritz who helps with household chores. We all cracked up when learning the answers to our questions about Fritz. How big is he? about the size of a dog. What color? Dog colored. When was he born? On his birthday. 

Mom-Mom had many Conversations with the girls. Having a Conversation really means going up to play in Mom-Mom’s room, as if that is a Sarah-Rise room. Mom-Mom had fake tattoos for the kids, cats for Amy and musical notes for Sarah. There were also small black cat confetti pieces and very large paper musical notes. I hid both for the kids to find. For Sarah I made the notes extremely obvious. For Amy I made the cats extremely camouflaged. Pop-Pop arranged radio control cars for the kids to drive and also taught Sarah to use their treadmill, which she did with great speed. 

Yesterday we met Carl’s cousin and her family at the Jersey shore for an absolutely perfect beach day. It was beastly hot if you weren’t by the water, but next to the water there was a glorious breeze, and the water was the perfect temperature. We arrived early enough to get super close parking, and we dined on hoagies, cheesesteaks and ice cream. We got sand everywhere and all of us got sunburned. We don’t go to the shore often enough to remember the lesson about how much more effectively ocean water removes sunblock compared to the removal power of lake water or pool water. Amy and Carl played in the waves a lot and Amy was fully immersed many times, so they both needed lots of aloe. 

The most poignant part of the trip for me was that we stayed in a rental house in Mount Airy about a block away from my childhood home. I walked past my old house, my best friends’ old house, and I traversed my old familiar path to get us coffee from my old Wawa. I swear that some hills used to be bigger and the blocks used to be longer. So many feelings that I can only describe as a mix of homesickness, grief over the good memories, and a joyful peace at being home. In a non-covid time I might consider knocking on my old door, but this was not the time to do so. I loved my old house very much and neighborhood is steeped in all of the memories of the good times with my best friends. I was in their house almost as much as my own. To commemorate my memories, we made a final Wawa stop before hitting the road, stocking up on the junk food I used to covet. So far we have enjoyed Krumpets and Tastycake cupcakes. Snowballs are in our future, along with some Philly pretzels. These pretzels don’t quite do justice to a true Philly pretzel that comes in a strip of eight, or singly warm in trade for my Thursday morning quarter at recess in elementary school. I kept my quarters in my little zipped pocket on my Kangaroo sneakers. 

May you have good memories and make more.