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Life in My World

November 5, 2007

            Last Thursday we flew into Newark, N.J. so that we could attend the last West Point Sprint football of the season—Army vs. Navy.  Abe asked us to bring his skis back to him.  I wish you could have seen Calvin toting them through the airport.  Every time he turned they swung around like a large crane ready to decapitate whoever was standing close.  I didn’t complain, I just ducked and was just glad I didn’t have to lug them about, but they were definitely a conversation starter.  I’ve never seen people in the East so friendly with Calvin—other than that time he was propositioned in the subway by a man running in the Pride Parade.

            We went to rent our car and the couple in front of us was practicing Orthodox Jews.  The wife was dressed very conservatively and wearing nylons with the dark seam running up the back.  Ande and Cali were admiring them and wondered where she got them so I asked her where to find nylons like hers.  She said, “Excuse me?” 

            I said, “Your stockings.  Where did you get them?” 

            She looked down at her legs and said, “My tights?”

            I said, “Yes.  Yes.  Tights.  Where did you buy your tights?” and then called to Cali and Ande that they are “tights” not “nylons”.

            The woman said, “Or, p-a-n-t-y-h-o-s-e.  Tights or p-a-n-t-y-h-o-s-e” enunciating very clearly and then she mimed how they fit on her waist saying, “Pants. Panties.  Pantyhose.”  She stopped and said, “Where are you from?” with a lilt that I must be from the Wild West frontier to have never heard of pantyhose.

            I explained to her that we were from Washington and that the girls had wanted tights with a seam up the back.  She then went on to explain how to find them, how much they cost, etc…in very elementary terms.  I loved her New York accent spelling out the details.

            By now, the woman and I had sat down on the bench to wait for our husbands.  I asked her about her little boy and she told the girls and me about the business trip they’d been on and how she’d grown up in Brooklyn but now lived in the suburbs. When her husband came to gather her and the baby and their things I thanked her for all of her information.  Her husband turned to us, with his fringed apron, top hat and curled ringlets and raised eyebrows and said, “She gave you information?” 

            He then paused and said to his wife, “Did you charge them?” 

            The joke of implication was not lost on us, but his wife—fearing we didn’t even know about cultured leg coverings, wasn’t certain we understood so she pshawed her husband and laughingly said, “He’s just a jokin’.  He’s just a jokin’.” 

            We now have a new family member—and she is loved and cherished as are all our other children.  Calvin adopted her the day before we left on our trip.  We tried several names, Jersey and Tallulah were two of them, but finally settled on Vikki.  She is a GPS and she saved our bacon.  Calvin forgot to take a turn on the New Jersey turnpike and we ended up in a middle of the spaghetti glob freeway system.  But, Vikki?  She saw us through and got us back on the right track.  She is the most respected person in our family.  We agreed there would be no talking back to her or arguing with her, we would simply obey.  Once we got that simple rule down we found she led us where we needed to go each time—and she takes up positively no space.  She is a delightful traveling companion and has suggestions on where to eat, attractions to see and entertainment available.  She is a virtual know-it-all.  She also has an amazing calming affect on Calvin in traffic.  He can now navigate the East traffic with relative comfort, relative being the key word here.  She really was amazing and we felt very indebted to her by the time we came home.  She will now accompany us on every single trip with a free ride wherever we go.

            After missing some turns and hearing Vikki patiently say, “Recalculating” we made it to Newburgh about 3 am.  This wasn’t bad considering it was only midnight Washington time.

            Friday morning we got up and went to breakfast at Denny’s then to meet Abe at West Point.  We were to meet him at Eisenhower statue.  Once again, walking among those 200 year old buildings quieted me.  It is an amazing place.  I don’t know that I’ll ever tire of it with the wooded hills surrounding it and the uniformed cadets walking from granite building to granite building.  It is not hard to imagine that Washington himself stood on those grounds or that Grant, Lee, Patton, McArthur, Patton, Eisenhower and Schwarzkopf went to school there, partly because West Point doesn’t let you forget it—they have buildings, statues, plaques and markers honoring great military men and women as well as the quote, “We taught the people you read about in History” posted in the halls of those stately buildings.

            The squirrels had also outdone themselves on the grounds.  They were in force running all over the plane and grasses.  Ande has a theory that they are really secret spies.   

            I kept watch for Abe, but didn’t pick him out until he was right in front of us.  Somehow, those uniforms camouflage your children.  I’ve stood by many mothers who thought she could pick her child out of the crowd only to realize she was loving and focusing on the wrong one.  As it was Friday, the cadets were all in ACU's instead of their dress grey uniforms.  He looked great and it was fun to hug him.  We followed him to Grant Hall to get a drink.  Grant Hall has lots of character—the oldness, the wood, the windows and the paintings. 

I captured a picture for Hydn Ulysses, my newest nephew.  I never realized Ulysses S. Grant was dashing as a young man.  At Grant Hall, Cali and Ande got grapes and Ben and Jerry’s black raspberry ice cream and a Paul Newman limeade.  I got a banana and Paul Newman kiwi-strawberry drink.  Hmmmm.  Can’t remember what Cavlin got and Abe wasn’t hungry.  We visited for an hour or so and met a couple of teammates who were there with their parents and then we left to see Sleepy Hollow while Abe went back to the barracks to get ready for the game. 

            Sleepy Hollow was established in 1641.  It was a beautiful winding drive up from West Point.  We didn’t have time to walk through the village so we just drove past the massive cemetery and looked at the cool houses.  We ate supper at a Diner.  Diner’s are our new favorite eating establishments, next to the established establishments like Olive Garden, Outback and Red Lobster. 

            Navy clobbered Army in the game, but it was still fun to watch on a fairly warm evening.  Abe (15) played well; however, he ended the night with a sprained ankle and couldn’t play the last five minutes.  It was great being in the stadium, watching the kids play, hearing the train that kept roaring down the track just a few hundred feet away and just being a part.  The ending—where the teams sing their alma mater to the crowd—is like the candy on the frosting on the cake. 

            Saturday we drove Cali to the Albany airport so that she could fly down to Washington, D.C.  The hills were gorgeous—bright, bright red, orange, yellow, gold and green trees of every hue—it was really, really pretty.  After we dropped Cali off we continued driving to Sharon, Vermont to see the birthplace of Joseph Smith. 

            We had a great time at the visitor’s center and I especially enjoyed seeing the groves of trees, creeks, stone bridge, hearth and scattered rock foundations.  An impressive place to memorialize an incredible man.  I had a copy of this inspiring and wonderful quote by E.T. Sullivan and we read it on our way, "When God wants a great work done in the world or a great wrong righted, he goes about it in a very unusal way.  He doesn't stir up his earthquakes or send forth his thunderbolts.  Instead, he has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home of some obscure mother.  And then God puts the idea into the mother's heart, and she puts it in into the baby's mind.  And then God waits.  The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquarkes and the thunderbolts.  The gretest forces in the world are babies."  (Quoted in The Treasure Chest, ed. Charles L. Wallis [1965], 53)

            Here Ande and Abe are at the foundation of Joseph’s grandparent’s home. 

           The kids have all said at one time or another that their favorite part of family trips is the driving and visiting in the car.  Years ago I bemoaned that we couldn’t get them game-boys, personal cd players, portable dvd players, etc.  Instead when we drove we visited or read, aloud and to ourselves.  What I had thought was deprivation has turned out to be a great source of happiness for all of us.  The kids sometimes rib me that I won’t let them listen to their iPods on trips because it excludes the family around them, but deep down, the visiting is the thing we’ve all come to look forward to and this trip was no exception.  The visiting was very satisfying.            

             On the way back to New York we stopped at a roadside shop for Calvin some real Vermont maple syrup.  Then we stopped at a Norman Rockwell shop/museum and bought four freedom prints for our home. 

             The next stop was supper at the Outback—oh, oh it was good.  Several of the football games were on and Calvin and Abe enjoyed seeing the ends of them.  Ande and I just visited. 

            Sunday we went to church with Abe and then went to Red Lobster to eat.  Ummmmm, um.  We all had salmon of some sort (except Abe who only had clam chowder so that he’d have room for dessert).   Abe invited one of his cadet buddies, Jeremy, to go with us.  Jeremy is witty and it was funny listening to them banter back and forth.  Ande sat in the middle of the two and just laughed.  Her laugh is perfect background noise and makes people feel good about themselves.  Thanks to Vikki we found Orange County Choppers and got a quick picture before Paulie Senior and Paulie Junior came out, the fear they might appear reminded me of a ghost story or stories of mean old men who eat you for lunch.  After driving around a little longer it was time to head back to West Point. 

            As we drove back on post Abe said, “Do you feel it, Jeremy?”  Jeremy said he did and Abe said, “Doesn’t matter how long you’re here you never get used to the dread that you have to gear up to make it through another week.” 

            Jeremy added that his TAC officer said it never goes away, even once you’re an officer at West Point.

            We dropped them off and Abe hobbled back to his room with Jeremy beside him.  What a grand week-end we’d had.

            Our flight Monday was fairly uneventful.  It seems to take forever to fly somewhere when you fly with the sun.  It’s always a little out of your reach so the day seems to last and last and last.  I thought the flight would never end.  Calvin and I weren’t able to sit together which made it even longer, but we did both manage to sit by cold fish.  However, the girl seated to my left was as pleasant as the girl to my right was rude.  The one on my left had just run the New York marathon the day before.  She had graduated from Princeton and was working in New York and attending a conference in Seattle.  She was such a delightful person and I don’t think her legs came unfolded the entire trip, Irigor mortis had set in and she wasn’t about to move until she could freely groan.

            What a great, great, great time life in my world has been.