Family Near and Far

What a special summer it’s been for family. More than when I was younger, I value family ties, even if many of these are through marriage. We were asked to make our plans to travel to England based on Paul’s brother Adrian’s 70th birthday. We spent a week in a lovely part of Cheshire in beautiful weather and spent part of it planning for the party in a nearby village hall and the last few days eating leftovers and just visiting with family. Their 5 children have all graduated from university now, and are becoming entrenched in rewarding careers. One even ran for a local county councilor and won! (I guess you might compare it to our Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.) Two of the others are busy repopulating the next generation with two wives having 6 children in 5 years. They live near enough to Grandma and Grandpa to visit fairly often. Two still live at home, one because of house/flat prices, and the second because he’s so busy he’s never at home! The last daughter is a primary school teacher at a private school in Berkshire.

Our own next generation is aging because our kids (now 39-44) have probably had all their children who range in age from 3-17. Our second oldest starts college next year, and as life would have it, he’s ready to spread his wings. Not only do we look back at pictures of our children when they were young and recall the time, place, occasion, or feeling, but now we do it for grandchildren, six of whom are now taller than their shrinking grandma, 5’3″.

We stayed in a cozy cottage in the rural Cheshire countryside with our daughter who joined us from her home in Spain. She had a real shock: She hadn’t seen many of her cousins for a dozen years or more and now they are real grown-up people! It was just so rewarding to see so many people and ages pulled together by a special occasion which was well-planned and a lot of fun. I think everyone who was there was related to some other member of the family, even if it was through marriage.

Before going to Cheshire for the main event, we spent 6 days in St. Andrews, our home away from home. We love it there and besides holding a lot of memories for us from University days, it is simply a beautiful place and we even had great weather. Due to the exorbitant prices of rental flats and houses in the area over the summer ($2000+ for two of us), we opted for staying in one of the halls of residence which are open for summer visitors. We really enjoyed it, more than we thought we would, because of the wide range of people staying there and the friendly, helpful staff. The breakfast was outstanding, too. There were two boys’ soccer teams of young teens staying there and they couldn’t have been more different. One was from New York City and the other was from Calgary, Canada. They spent a week playing other teams in the area, and taking part in practices and coaching events. They even went to Edinburgh to see a professional team play, I’m sure they loved that day out. I was rather impressed by the pleasant behavior of both of the groups of teens.

Our last visit before returning home was to the Isle of Wight to see Paul’s sister, an enclosed nun at St. Cecilia’s Abbey. It’s in a beautiful part of Ryde, in a high position, with woods and a food garden, and overlooking the sea (or perhaps it’s the English Channel). She is thriving on the monastic life and has found a new family there, not surprising since she now been there almost 40 years.

We then traveled to Gatwick and home, and even though it was only 15 days away, we were ready for our home comforts and quieter life.