time forward sunday

There were geese in the field today, just two, and they were walking around pecking at things near the roadway and they barely moved as the car pulled near them, turning onto our street, pulling into our drive.
Last night there was a game-night at the house of a woman I have known for the past twenty-plus years and the "girls" there, for the most part, were women who have all known each other that long. Every one was married including a twenty-nine year old who might have felt a bit out of place. Was she bored talking and listening to middle-aged women? Those of us with kids growing and grown and out or nearly out of the house. The grandmothers, becoming grandmothers.
We played Taboo and laughed and applauded and ate snackie foods and drank tea and water and soda. At nine p.m., some of the "girls" called it a night and left, carrying their dishes home while the remainder of us settled in to watch the tivo'd version of the Josh Kezer story on 48 hours. I sat on the floor near Kim's chair (the hostess), and Shelley sat on the other side and Kim put her feet on Annette's chair and the dogs nestled in close to me on the floor as I petted their bellies, rubbed their little dog heads.
David, Kim's husband, came home from a men's bible study and sat down with us. Lisa, home from a day in St. Louis, came over to their house and curled up on the couch with a couple other girls, all under blankets, cold from a day in the rain, at a child's soccer tournament. Looking around, it wasn't that different from our days in college. Not that different. Except for experience and interest, marriage, divorce, travel and death. The falling away, the loss of some friends, the picking up of others. "Make new friends and keep the old, one like silver and the other gold..."

"Where does Ray want to go for spring break?"..it was Dylan asking this weekend.
"I don't know...Where would YOU like to go?"
"Nowhere, I just want to stay home and recuperate from getting my wisdom teeth pulled." Last year we drove to the Gulf and spent a few nights in a small place that we found years ago. Each apartment has its own kitchenette, a separate bedroom, pull-out sleepers in the living-room and a patio or deck that faces the Florida beach directly. Dylan spent a night drinking with some older boys, while I slept, and then spent the next day, on the drive home, sick in the car. We had to pull over while he vomited at the roadside. Bad mother? Possibly, but it taught him a lesson.
And on the drive home we stopped in Mobile at Chuck's request and toured an old war-ship while Dylan slept in the car. By the time we reached New Orleans he was up for a light snack followed by Beignets and coffee and streetside Jazz.
Ray would like to go to California for spring break, but this year it is not affordable. Even flights to Las Vegas are out of my price range(California by way of Vegas). Earnings down, expenses up. So going to a map of the United States, I chart out a driving route. Missouri to California and back in five days? Ouch. Better think of something else. And I do: Texas? New Mexico? Still I think how nice it would be to take Ray to California at some point. He would enjoy the farmer's market in San Francisco. We could travel up through Napa and further north, skimming the coast-line. Maybe it is just a dream, but a nice one.