Traveling Solo

"Mom, come and see me," my Mongolian daughter, Brynn, asked me, several times of late.  Brynn lives in Tucson, AZ with her husband, Roy.  They just had their first baby, a beautiful son they named Eric Jansan Long.  They wanted me to come and talk to them about caring for a baby and, especially, to talk to them about educating him.  I have a system for educating young children at home that I worked on for years when my children were young.  I believe that I wound up with a plan that is simple and inspired.  I got excited at the idea of sharing it, and also at the idea of visiting Brynn and Roy.  So I began to make plans to do so.  The only time I could come and work around their upcoming company was to come this past week.  But we had just returned from our Colorado trip.  You may imagine how unexcited Layne was about doing yet another trip.  Besides, he was feeling tired and aspects of his cold were lingering.  So I invited him to stay home.

As it turns out, grandson Scott (son of Reed and Dorothy) was graduating from High School last Friday.  So I decided to combine trips, fly to Tucson for the first part of the week and fly to San Francisco for the second part, returning home on Saturday.  Its funny how quickly habits form.  I am so used to traveling with Layne, who takes care of all traveling arrangements.  I happily let him do this, depending upon him to get us wherever we are going at the time.  So I was a bit nervous about handling it all myself.  But it all turned out very nicely.

On Monday I flew into SFO and transferred to a flight into Tucson, where Roy met me.  Roy and Brynn live in a combination of two condos, next to each other, near the center of town.  They are older places, but they have one of them fixed up nicely to hold their little family.  The other one is used for company and Roy's Real Estate business.  So my space was very private and comfortable.  They wanted my educational plan first thing, so we discussed it all morning.  I brought them all sorts of materials, organized to support a couple of basic principles:  use Eric's wall space to teach simple concepts that will open his world; like letters and words, numbers, and colors for starters.  They teach him those things when it is easy for them--when they are changing diapers, at bed and nap time.  He then sees the reinforcing pictures in his room and they act like a review--the secret of memory.  As he grows older the pictures change to reinforce more complex information.  "Decorate to Educate" I call it.  I believe it to be a wonderful system and think I convinced them to try it.

They took me all over Tucson, showing me all sorts of sights and views of the desert.  I must say the desert has never appealed to me but I can see some of the beauty in it.  I still don't want to live there, but Roy and Brynn love it.  Even with the 100+ degree weather that the summer brings them.  The time with them passed pleasantly.

Roy and Brynn, on top of one of the surrounding mountains of Tucson, with a beautiful view behind them.

                                           Roy and Brynn's son, Eric Jansan Long.

I flew into SFO, rode BART to Pleasanton and on to Mountain House on Thursday morning.  Staying with Audrey and Cliff is always pleasant.  We visited and shopped a bit and on Friday Audrey dropped me off at Reed and Dorothy's to attend Scott's graduation.  He was one of some 600+ graduates, so they held it outside, on the football field.  Each graduate was allowed 10 visitors.  So you would think that it would be fairly easy to figure how how many people would be in attendance.  We arrived early but all bleacher seats were filled.  There were no other seats (why not put up folding chairs at one end of the football field you may ask--I did). With no other seating in sight, we settled ourselves on a small patch of grass that had no view of the proceedings.  Standing at the fence gave us a very distant view.  But, surprisingly, they had the whole proceedings online, so we watched it on my phone!  The good part about that was that I was able to get a pretty close up shot of Scott getting his diploma.  But generally I was underwhelmed.  But I surely am proud of my fine grandson, Scott.

                                      Reed and Audrey, after lunch on Friday.

                      James, Dorothy, Scott, Bruce, Reed, Vincent, and Timmy Galbraith.

                                           Scott and me on his graduation day.

I flew home on Saturday.  I was so happy to see Layne feeling perky once again.  I suppose I have to say that my absence was good for him.