visiting

We are in Walla Walla, Washington right now.

Walla Walla is where my mothers father was born in 1886. His family arrived about 20 years earlier from Iowa by means of a wagon and a two year trip.

Because of that pull, I guess, Miriam and I have lived here a good hunk of our lives, and Arline continues to live here. She says she has come to think of it as home.

It is a peasant place, with spring a few weeks earlier and fall a bit later than where we live in Idaho, but the two days with the most extreme temps that I have endured were here in this town. And we have lived in Texas. One winter it was 35 below zero and a few summers later it hit 117 one still summer day.

Grandpa said it was the town that they liked so well they named it twice. His family were civil engineers and surveyors. He claimed that his family laid out the straight streets. There obviously had been a lot of others working who did hold to the same credo.

But it is not a cheap place to live, even though there are endless acres all directions. Everything has to be brought in a little further and with limited land building is spendy and so on.

But we came to visit family. To recharge family batteries, and to enjoy a bit of warmer weather. It is good to be with grand kids.

Miriam of course, is anxious to go home already. This morning she asked when we were going. I told her I didn’t know, and she quizzed me further. She is not a happy person away from her home, when she thinks about it. The key is to keep her from thinking.

Already I feel invigorated. I’ll prune my daughter’s grapes this week and so a little something to make myself useful.

And I will talk with my grandkids, I love them.