More Good Times

 

 

 

Dinner with the Haques and Kay Barrett

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday afternoon while Harry was teaching at ICAR in Greenville and I was preparing for a 5:30 meeting of the membership committee at my church, Eric and Lynn paid my dad a visit. They'd intended to take him out for ice cream at the university, but Dad preferred a quiet visit in his apartment. From all reports, it was a great visit. Dad was quite talkative and Lynn was quite curious, so that was a good combination. One of the things they talked about was why most elderly people in America don't live with their children.  Dad had surveyed everybody on his hall, asking if they'd prefer to live with their kids.  None of them did!  But all like living near their kids, if possible.  In China, the elderly live with their kids.  I guess they discussed several other things as well, such as Dad's childhood, his parents, his career, and so on.

At 6:00 we all converged from different directions at the home of our dear friends, Mary and Imtiaz Haque. There were 9 around the table: the four of us, another friend, Kay Barrett (whose kids grew up with Eric), Mary and Imtiaz's daughter, Mariana, and a young man who's a friend of their family, Fraser Henderson. Fraser had taught in China for a while in a place Lynn and Eric have visited. Now he's in medical school at the Univ. of Virginia. Mariana is beginning a new job at BMW in Greenville on Monday. So much youth, so much potential, such beauty and health! 

Conversations before and during dinner ranged broadly. All of the older folks asked the younger ones lots of questions.  And we shared lots of laughs too.  Dinner was prepared by a new local Lebanese restaurant we all like. Great food and great friends, new and old.

This morning I whipped up another batch of blueberry muffins while the kids slept in. Now they're off to continue rebalancing America's debt while I finish this up.  While I'm attending another church event (they all seem to have converged at once during the kids' visit) this evening, they'll go with Harry and Dad to that Japanese restaurant they didn't get to go to earlier in their visit.  Tomorrow Lynn may accompany me to the child development center (if she gets up early enough). In the evening we'll go to dinner at the home of one of Harry's Chinese colleagues.  We're packing in everything we can manage, and we'll probably collapse next week after the kids leave, but it'll have been well worth it.