Spontaneous Trip

I was missing my Dad. He said, "Just come." I couldn't wait for Georgia to meet her Uncle Patrick and his family. He said "Bring her here now." My sister-in-law's birthday bash was added incentive. So I booked tickets, packed up the kids and off we went to Minneapolis for five days.

On the flight home, I jotted down this quick list of highlights:

• Sitting up talking with my dad into the wee hours the night we arrived.
• Leisurely mornings drinking coffee, happily watching my Dad and his wife Laurie snuggle my kids.
• Listening to Xavier explaining to them that his dinosaurs "lived a long time ago, in a different time period."
• Cheering on my 10-year-old niece Fiona at her rock climbing competition.
• Celebrating my sister-in-law Paula at the birthday bash Patrick threw for her at a cool bar in the North Loop.
• Slumber party with cousins which included playing hide and seek, watching cartoons, and making a waffle feast.
• Lounging all day Sunday. "Just like Christmas," said my dad.
• Listening to Xavier giggle on his Uncle Pappy's lap - "Give me five. Up high. Down low. Cut the Pickle. Tickle Tickle."

• Visiting my dear friend Karin and marveling that we now have children playing together.
• Going through boxes of photos, newspaper articles and WWII medals from my paternal Grandfather and remembering him. (More on him to come soon).
• Watching 12-year-old Liam and 10-year-old Finn teaching Xavier how to play basketball in their backyard.
• Xavier solemnly complying to give Paula frequent kisses. "It's been five minutes," she'd say and he'd stop whatever he was doing to kiss her on the cheek.
• Fiona doing a clever card trick - I couldn't figure out how she did it.
• Watching Georgia bounce and laugh in everyone's lap as we passed her around.
• And we had a sunny outing to my favorite place in Minneapolis, the Walker Sculpture Garden. We walked across the poetry bridge to Loring Park to celebrate more National Poetry Month.

The plaque reads: "The bridge, a 375-foot steel-truss construction, spans 16 lanes of traffic to enable pedestrians to cross easily between Loring park and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. It's pair of overlapping arches represents a metaphoric handshake, uniting two areas of the city. Inset along the bridge's upper beams is a poem by John Ashbery that transforms the experience of crossing into a brief escape from place and time." 

And now I cannot remember how I would
have had it. It is not a conduit (confluence?) but a place.
The place, of movement and an order.
The place of old order.
But the tail end of the movement is new.
Driving us to say what we are thinking.
It is so much like a beach after all, where you stand
and think of going no further.
And it is good when you get to no further.
It is like a reason that picks you up and
places you where you always wanted to be.
This far, it is fair to be crossing, to have crossed.
Then there is no promise in the other.
Here it is. Steel and air, a mottled presence,
small panacea
and lucky for us.
And then it got very cool.

—John Ashbery