Thursday, May 5, 2011

Grand Finale

“Mom, what are you going to do when you get home?” our son, Mark, asked on the phone as we talked to him during our trip home after being gone nearly three weeks.

“I don’t know,” I said, “when I think about it, it’s just a big blank.” We’d had such a good time visiting with several of our kids and grandchildren while we were away that home seemed dull in comparison. Besides all the fun we’d had in Tennessee and North Carolina, we spent two more days stopping back by Amy’s in Georgia. Not only had we gotten to attend services with her at their beloved church near Atlanta in Marietta, just hanging out with them and seeing a slice of their everyday lives warmed my heart.

A special treat for me was tagging along shopping and helping granddaughter Corrin pick out a dress for the 8th grade Formal. Amy had asked me if I would check out some stores for possibilities while she was at work that day, and that evening we were doing follow up. Corrin at first selected a demure, flowered confection that looked very cute on her, but of course, we couldn’t stop with the first thing she saw. It was like dressing a Barbie doll as we sat in the dressing room while she modeled one irresistible fashion after another, from a polka-dot with a flouncy skirt to a star-wars grey sateen with angular straps. Naturally she would decide on a dramatic black and white that made her look like a movie starlet. Watch out, Mom and Dad!

On the way home we picked up 16-year-old Reid from Life Guard classes he was taking for a hoped-for summer job. He’d been getting sunburned and sore from the training; tonight was a written test and he wouldn’t know the results immediately. He piled into the back seat with his friend, another hopeful, while 12-year-old Rachel made room by climbing into the rear of the SUV with poster-board and supplies for a school project to do when we got home.

Shortly after I had talked to Mark, the phone rang again. “Mom, we want to take you to dinner tonight when you get home if you’re not too tired,” Joanna, our daughter-in-law announced. She said it was complicated, but Allison had a large credit on her food tab at college that would be lost if it were not used by Saturday. She was inviting us to go with them to an upscale hotel on campus that served pricey gourmet food by chefs-in-training.

The place was spectacular! The Ranchers’ Club looked like a rich cattleman’s club complete with a glassed-in display of cowboy hats and the names of their local ranch owners in the foyer. Deep leather chairs lined up around a table like Dallas’s South Fork set with gleaming white linen, china, crystal and silver awaited us. A four-course meal was served, with new place settings for each course (these kids were doing it right!) and fabulous food with exotic touches (edible art, they called it) adorning our plates. After respective desserts of mousse, chocolate torte, and apple/cranberry crustattas, we decided it was good to be home! Like my husband is fond of saying, “Daily He loads us with benefits.”

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