I remember the first time Carol made me laugh out loud. Not giggle. Not chuckle. Laugh out loud. We were PMing at the time, and she was recalling a bus trip she’d been on in Mallorca. I replied that I saw busses in our future. She wrote back, “Of course you see busses in our future; you don’t have a car.”

Over the past two years or so, Carolyn has appeared several times in my dreams. In all cases, we were separated from each other, she living in a different city from me. I believe in all these dreams, the plan was to meet up again, but something kept popping up to keep us apart. Separation being analogous to death, at least in this dreamscape, I took these dreams as visitations. Then I experienced a true visitation.

Reporting back from an enjoyable holiday, and I can happily state that Carol did not buy me a Lexus for Christmas. I did not buy her one either. In fact, we are trying to sell the one she owns.

Ever since she’s been able to walk, talk and spurn, my youngest granddaughter has regarded me with a mix of antipathy, chagrin and disdain.

When traveling, I don’t like committing to much in advance. I don’t make hotel accommodations until I know what train I’m arriving on, and I don’t know what train I’m arriving on until I know what city we’re going to next. And I don’t know what city I’m going to until…well, you get the idea: when contemplating tomorrow on the road, I prefer waiting until today has more or less become yesterday.

Next Saturday, Carol and I will be attending her 50th high school reunion in Yonkers, N.Y. My role will be her dutiful arm ornament. As jewelry, I’m closer to the kind left unclaimed in a pawn shop, rather than glittering off the wrist of a NY socialite. Plus Carol was the head cheerleader for her high school (Carol insists she was never the head cheerleader, but she’s not telling this story, I am). Which means expectations could be high for someone like a Johnny Depp or a Michael Douglas to be draped around her. I can do Randy Quaid, or with dim-lighting, maybe a Paul Giamatti in a stretch of credulity, but my guess is some form of “looks were never important to me,” will find its way into introductory conversations.

Views like this make it tempting We were having a glass at Carol’s daughter and son-in-law’s golf club. The patio features a wonderful view of the course that routes through a valley with the purple and sage saddleback range in the distance. I commented on the panoramic view and the course’s deep green under the […]

   Yesterday was the first anniversary of the first trip Carol and I took together. We went to France, which had been the scene of my first solo train trip the year before. Without really thinking it through (which is generally my method of thinking things through), this second France trip was a test of how well I stack up as a solo versus a companion traveler. In retrospect, it was probably more of a test of how well Carol stacked up as a companion to a solo traveler.

    I consider taking one’s granddaughters on a road trip to American Girl Place something akin to guerilla grandparenting. As a grandpa, you are most decidedly in an alien land of pink. Armed with only a credit card, you are surrounded by the enemy’s many check out counters primed and ready for battle. Steeling yourself, you tell yourself you can get out of this with your bank account remaining in good standing, even as the dead dolls eyes of WellieWishers stare back at you with what you swear is a sneer of pure mockery.

Being home

   When we’re back home after a trip, Carol and I head off in different directions: she to the laundry room to wash even the clean clothes she’s returned with (“bedbugs like to hitch a ride in suitcases.:”), and I to the couch to unpack from the trip a little differently.

   I first try to get the measure of whether I behaved as a tourist or a traveler. Tourists rush about cramming as much activity as they can into their two-week vacation before rushing back home exhausted, complaining they need a vacation from their vacation. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was “off” about this last trip of ours, until I was able to reconstruct it in touristy terms. We went to Europe in the rush of its tourist season. Every place we went had some sort of a self-imposed deadline, as we were due in Heidelberg for a wedding in the middle of it. There was this drive to see as much as we could, yet not stray too far from a day’s travel from Heidelberg. Time and place did open up after the wedding, but by then the rhythm and pace of the trip seemed to have been set. We rushed home even sooner than we had planned. Carol noted my blogs of the trip lacked the usual purposelessness, with none of the charmingly pointless observations of our two earlier trips together, as well as my previous solo journeys. Not to put too fine a point on it, the trip carried the same unease for me that perplexed Gregor Samsa when he awoke to find himself turned into an insect.