I'm sure that because of my two plus week haitus, a lot of you thought that I gave up on my feeble attempt at blogging. Wrong! Mountain Man and I made a trip up to Ohio for a combination birthday celebration for our token son's wife and their eldest chile and Thanksgiving. As anyone who has ever moved away from their home state and then gone back to visit, it's impossible to see everyone on the "I need to get together with..." list. I made my list, checked it twice, added a few more names and then both Mountain Man and I got sick. He with a severe sinus infection (partially blamed on breathing the smoke from the forest fires), and I with my usual standby thyroid issues that had been brought on by the stress of the move and the exhaustion from the renovations. Needless to say, other than the immediate fam, our doctors got to visit us the most in our first week in Ohio. Always looking for a bright side, feeling like I had been run over by a truck made me take it much easier than normal and gave me a lot more snuggle and reading time with my two grands. You will never hear this Bhakti (their name for me) complain about too much snuggle time!
Thanksgiving was a beautiful day. The whole day before, we cooked and spent the day together, and on Thanksgiving day, it was awesome! The first Thanksgiving day in 30 some years that I didn't put the meal together! Once the turkey was in the oven, I was off duty. I got to watch the Macy's Parade, play, read the newspaper peruse the ads and just plain relax. It was one of the best Thanksgivings EVER! The kids did a fantastic job of putting on the dinner. They have learned well and the baton has been passed. We have had a changing of the guard! Can you tell that I am totally excited by this change of events? After our family dinner, Mountain Man went back to bed, my Daughter-in-Law (I really dislike that term for her. She is as much mine as my two girl chillin so until I can come up with an appropriate title for her I will from herein refer to her as one of the girl chillin and you can just be confused!) took the two grands to her family Thanksgiving and my two chillin and I went to the nursing home to visit Mountain Man's ex mother-in-law. She is actually our mama of the heart since she never let go of Mountain Man and she adopted me and mine when we got married 26 years ago. She has been laid up in a nursing home for the past 15 months since breaking both legs in a fall. We had a wonderful visit with her and promised to be back in a few days to see her again. Then we went to visit our girl chile's family for a while. Shortly after we all got home in the evening, we received a call that our mama of the heart had passed away shortly after we left. Even though we had watched her health fail over the past few years, she was doing so well on Thanksgiving that we were totally in shock when the call came. I am so blessed to have had that one last great visit with her.
The next week was a blur trying to catch up with all of the promised visits. I must say, I failed miserably. I did get to stop into my old place of employment and I got to see a lot of my beloved coworkers. It felt really good that they were as excited to see me as I was to see them. Hopefully, during my next trip to Ohio -- we are supposed to go up in January for the memorial service-- I will be able to see the rest of them and everyone else on my list.
Leaving Ohio was bittersweet. As you would expect, I hate having to say goodbye to my chillin' and my grands, but after being in Ohio for those two weeks, Mountain Man and I realized that Ohio is not home anymore. Our home is in our sweet little cabin in the beautiful North Georgia mountains. As much as we love being with our family and friends, there is just something in these mountains. On the drive home, as soon as we could see the mountains again, we had an overwhelming sense of inner peace and joy. It's a combination of so many things that it's hard to pinpoint what exactly makes this feel like home. I know that at this time of year, our town is much smaller, it only consists of the full timers now. All of the Floridians and summer renters have gone home for the rest of the year. Now, when you pass a car on the road, you get a friendly wave. When you pass someone on the street in town, they stop to chat for a moment. It's more like living with an extended family rather than a town full of strangers. We went to the annual Christmas parade (Yes, it was a Christmas Parade, not a "Holiday" parade) downtown last night. The whole town comes out for events such as this. There was music on the town square. Santa was visiting with all of the children, the ladies of the historical society had a bake sale set up and I'm pretty sure they sold out! The parade was great fun, but then again, I am partial to parades! After the parade was over, we stopped in to the local coffee shop not only for a caffeine fix, but to visit with the owners. Then after walking around town, we stopped into the motel that we stayed in while waiting to get in our house in what now seems was a lifetime ago. The owners of the hotel not only remembered us, but welcomed us with warm hugs. We enjoyed a great visit with them before making our way back through town to our car and home again. I know that for some, all of the friendly, family type atmosphere would be an uncomfortable and stifling thing. For Mountain Man and me, this is exactly what we need at this point in our lives. The only thing that could make this life any better would be to have all of our chillin and grands here with us. That is not to be at this point so we will make the most of our visits to Ohio and Florida and make the most of their visits here with us. We know now, after only one visit back to Ohio that in these mountains, we are exactly where we belong... we are home!
