Tale of Two Weekends -- #2

Diary

OK, we played a trick on my mother, a terrible one though I don't think she minded, but the important thing is...it's not my sister's fault. I admit it. It was my idea. I had one weekend "free," though for me these days "free time" is actually an oxymoron--no, a nitromoron. And I had a mother near Dallas pining away because her (50-year-old) baby boy was running off before she could see him.

So I called my sister, and she recruited my father in this conspiracy, and she picked me up at DFW last Friday night. About ten o'clock I rang the doorbell and she answered and jumped up and down and...well, you know.

Of course, the house was perfect (in perfect Dutch style--can I write that?) and of course "my" room was ready. Saturday we had a nice lunch at my sister's house, and be concise, we stuffed our faces all weekend. OK, now this weight thing is getting serious.

The parents' picture is elsewhere on this blog, so the most I can add to your understanding them, within a single picture, is this view from their back of their house. The location is lovely. They cultivate habits of choosing well and then raising their choices to perfection. Just as when they adopted me! hahahahahahaha...OWW!!!
 

Of course my sister and I (and my niece, hung over I mean sleepy from her high-school prom, as well as my nephew) treated Mother and Father to a wonderful brunch at the Lincoln Center (I'll overlook the Illinois overtones). We walked along the ponds, where I admired the boat-tailed grackles and their raucous song that sounds something like an electronic synthesizer being backed over by a truck...

and then it was time for me to fly back.
 

BONUS PARAGRAPH!!!: That Friday afternoon, while I waited at O'Hare for my Dallas flight to surprise my Mother, an enormous KLM jet rumbled past. It was 5:10 pm. I was astonished to realize that that was the flight, the very aircraft, that I will board the next Friday, and that beginning at 5:10 will whisk me to Europe. Through one of those windows I will watch the US recede in the evening and the Haarlem tulips pass below, the next morning.