TheBanyanTree: Back to Christmas for a sec

[NancyIee at aol.com]

I wrote about my New Year's, but I must6 mention Christmas, Too.

One of my gifts was (at great expense for the giver)  a round trip airline 
ticket to MN and a week's worth of rental car.  So, I went north for Christmas.

MN was about fifty degrees colder than FL, with snow on the ground and tree 
branches, dirty slop in the streets, and a long, slow drive from the airport to 
my old hunting grounds. There were only snowmobiled tracks up the drive to 
the old farm. I really worked the rental car (a brand new, 14 miles on the 
odometer Chrysler PT Cruiser . .white) to the top of the drive. There, I visited my 
old home,  and made new tracks down to look over the pasture and fields, 
where my horses roamed in days of old.

I spent the holiday with my children, reconnecting gloriously with my 
daughetrs, being amazed how my grandchildren grew. I somehow thought they would be 
the same little kids as when I last saw them. The baby of the bunch,( 
ten-count-em, ten) is going to school next Fall, one of the older ones has moved in with 
her boyfriend.  I commiserated with my daughter about that, but secretly 
thought back to her own teen years and the trials we danced in those days.

I ate too much, three Christmas dinner, and one Christmas Eve party, and a 
fabulous reconnection with my oldest. How I miss them all.

I miss the snow, the winter fog freezing on the tips of the tree branches, 
the cracking of the ice out on the lake, the cold air in my lungs. Don't drive 
on the ice in MN, just yet. Six cars have already gone through Prior Lake. Dumb 
ice fishermen!

It was a great trip, and I thank and thank the one who gave it.


NancyLee