On the Road Again 2011 #34

I had, perhaps somewhat foolishly, planned to go to Salt Spring the next day (the wedding was on a Friday). I wanted to have my daughter and two grandkids see the island that I have called my home for these past few summers, to experience the Saturday Market and most importantly to meet Sally. My daughter has heard so much about Sally and Sally has heard so much about my daughter and the kids. I wanted all of my family to get to know each other, and to see why they were all so important to me. It was of course a silly wish. Not only did the hall need to get cleaned up before noon but I was just too tired to think about doing any travelling or visiting. It would have been nice but I just did not have the energy.

None-the-less it was a nice day with the families working together to do the cleanup at the hall. In the afternoon after I returned the rental car my brother and sister-in-law dropped by for a visit and brought some food. It was a nice relaxing day - exactly what we all needed. Later the whole family had supper together and the happy couple opened their presents. It was a nice gentle end to the wedding.

However there was a sense of sadness with me all that day. I knew I needed to be heading east. I had been gone for over nine weeks. I needed to get back to the apartment and get ready for school, the fall and my weaving.  It was time to go home. But I did not want to go. It would have taken very little to convince me to stay.  Every year it feels as if it gets harder and harder to pack my stuff and leave.

On Sunday I did a laundry, packed up my unneeded clothes and took the box down to the Greyhound Station. Greyhound appears to be cheaper than Canada Post in terms of shipping stuff back and forth. They seem to be just as reliable and certainly it is not any slower. I packed and repacked my pack (with the help of my grandson who delights in playing with my stuff, although he does occasionally forget where he has put it) trying to make it as small and as functional as possible. For awhile it looked as if I was going to get a ride to Kamloops but that didn’t work out, so late Sunday afternoon I got my son to drive me to Nanaimo where I had booked a room at the hostel. I needed to be in Nanaimo so I could catch the ferry out first thing Monday morning.

My son and I do not say goodbye easily or well. I am not too sure why. We have lots of time to talk and we do talk about all kinds of things. We even have talked about that fact that we don’t say goodbye very well. But we just don’t seem to get any better at saying it. Maybe it is the distance or the length of time between visits, or maybe it is because we are both men and are therefore not really in touch with our feelings. But I think it might be because we are in touch with our feeling. We know that we will miss each other and there is not a damn thing that we can do about it. So all there was was a quick hug outside of the hostel and then I was on my own. Once again I was alone, the single traveler ready the next day to start looking for a ride. To once again “hit the road” with that inherent feeling of excitement, anticipation and apprehension.

On the Road Again 2011 # 33

 In spite of it have been already a pretty exciting summer, the biggest event was yet to come. My son was getting married! And I got to be around for it all.

The three of us (my grandson, my son and I) went out shopping for clothes. It would not surprise anyone who knows him, but my son knew what he wanted and nothing less would do for his wedding clothes. It took us a couple of days but finally he put together his outfit and he looked great. (as did his bride and his son). Perhaps the best purchase was a pair of dress shoes that we found in a second hand store for $2.00. They were perhaps the buy of the year.

At some point in one of our shopping trips it struck me that it was the first time in perhaps a hundred years that there had been three generations of Woodall males in the same place. My paternal grandfather had died before I was born and my father had never known his grandfather either. It was an extraordinary realization and feeling. To be so connected to the past and to the future was, for a brief moment, almost so breath taking that I did not want to do anything except bask in the moment. The pleasure was almost paralyzing. The joy and yes the pride was almost palpable.  I truly felt blessed. But there was more to come.

I had been excited about the wedding for months - not just because they were finally getting hitched, but also because it meant that I would get to see my son and my daughter and all three of my grandchildren in the same room at the same time. There have been many times in the past ten years when I had just accepted that my children would always live in different parts of the country and that I would never get to see them together.  I could have (almost) quite happily gone home after I saw them all together. The fact that my brother and his wife were also there made it even more special. As my son said at one point , he had already got his wedding present from his family. I too got every present that I will ever need for the rest of my life on that day.

The wedding went without an obvious hitch, the weather was great, the bride beautiful, the ring bearer did get (eventually) up to the front to be with his parents, people got their pictures taken, there was piles of food, people had fun and all got home safely. What else could you ask for? There is far more to the wedding story than that, but it is not my story to tell. It is my son’s and my daughter-in-law’s story and hopefully one day, one of them will do their own blog about the happy day.

There is something to be said for low budget weddings. For both of my kids, we have decorated the halls ourselves. For the most recent wedding I even made some of the decorations. For both weddings helping out the day before meant that I got to hang out with my children’s in-laws. To get to know them and to learn about their family.  Everybody should do this way.

Thanks kids.