All Good Things....

As I begin this at 4:45 p.m., Monday, Oct. 3, the kids have just lifted off from Detroit for a 16 hour flight to Shanghai.  From there they take another flight to their home city, Guangzhou.  Fortunately, this is Golden Week, a national holiday, so neither one of them has to work for several days.

While Eric and Lynn began packing on Sunday, I was involved in a lengthy event at church, so I didn't get to see them until about 4:30 p.m., when I met them in Easley where they were returning their rental car.  No more driving for Eric until his next trip home, whenever that may be.  We met Harry and Dad at that new Lebanese place we like so much and had our last meal together.  I know that every time Dad says goodbye to Eric (and now to Lynn), at 94 he thinks about whether he'll get to see them again. I predict he will.  Dad is in great health.

As expected, the kids stayed up pretty late trying to figure out how to pack about 100 lbs. of stuff into the bags they arrived with, plus two bags I gave them.  I had a couple of huge Space Bags, those strong plastic packing bags that you vacuum the air out of to compress your stuff down to a stiff wafer.  Even using two of those, their bags were very heavy. At the airport, Eric had to redistribute the weight to avoid paying overweight fees.

At about 2:00 a.m., I noticed that the power had gone off.  No thunder storm or anything; just suddenly no power.  Oh, brother, I thought.  How are they going to get up at 5:00 and grope around with flashlights while finishing packing, and without any coffee or tea to help them wake up?  But about 4:00 a.m., the power came back on. I knew this in spite of having no lights turned on, because for some bizarre reason, the little counter-top TV we have in the kitchen always comes on when the power comes back on, even though it hadn't been on earlier!  Suddenly I heard men's loud voices, some sportscasters shouting me awake!  Yikes!  So I went to the kitchen to turn it off and then couldn't get back to sleep.  C'est la vie.

Time to curl up under that Clemson Snuggie. It's a long trip.

So, where does that leave me in closing out this blog?  Tired, but very contented. We adore Lynn, and she seems to like us pretty well, too.  She and Harry were the ones getting choked up at the airport. We feel like she's our daughter, and hope that she'll be our daughter-in-law someday. We'll see. It's up to them. They seem to be very good together. He catered to her wishes, and we sensed no tension between them in our presence. And it's been such a joy to watch Eric taking the lead during Lynn's first trip to America. We're so proud of the man he's become.  Now we'll look forward to our regular Skype calls with them, and dream about their next visit.