So, a couple weeks ago, Murray, Ping-Hwei, and I went to
visit Benjamin.
Until last fall, I hadn’t flown for a number of years. And
the feeling I had from last fall was that I didn’t like it much. Especially the
airports. Fast moving, hard to find where we need to be, need to hurry.
This time the first airport and the flight itself went
pretty smoothly. I shouldn’t worry so much.
We touched down in Denver at 1:20 p.m.
Then, with walking through the airport, finally finding our
luggage, looking for the shuttle to the rental cars, finally getting to the
rental cars, and fighting with GPS to get to the other side of town, it was
after 5:00 before we got to Benjamin’s.
Benjamin climbed in the car and said, “Well, I’m glad you
made it here.”
I was so happy to see Benjamin. I hadn’t seen him since last
May. He likes Boston brown bread that I make, so I’d been trying to get him
some for eight months.
In September, when Murray went to help Benjamin move from
Michigan to Denver, I sent some bread, but they forgot it in the Michigan
apartment. For Benjamin’s birthday in December, we mailed him some, but the
package took so long to get there, the bread was no longer edible.
So, when I said, “Benjamin, I brought you some Boston brown
bread,” he said, “But?” The poor kid didn’t believe it could have got there
successfully.
This time he got his bread.
Benjamin showed us some great restaurants over the weekend,
some well-known, some local. Hamburgers, Mexican, pizza. All so yummy.
Benjamin suggested we go to a movie on Saturday, “Project
Hail Mary,” and he told us the theater had audio description. That was great,
devices with headphones for Benjamin and me, where a voice described what was
happening besides the dialogue. This was a fast-paced science fiction movie, so
even though it was hard to hear the commentator when the music and action got
loud, it would have been impossible to understand the movie without it.
It was fun, an earthling on a spaceship, Dr. Grace, and he
meets up with a being from another planet on another spaceship, Rocky. Rocky
joins Dr. Grace on his spaceship, so they can work to solve the problem
together. Once, something exciting happens, and Dr. Grace wants to give Rocky a
hug. Hugging is new for Rocky, and he’s not sure how to do it, and he asks,
“How do you know when the hug is done?” The rest of the weekend, I would hug
Benjamin and say, “Let’s see if we can figure out when the hug is done.”
On Sunday, Murray wanted to go up Pikes Peak. Once we got to
the bottom where we had to check in and pay, the man said we couldn’t go up all
the way because of icy roads. He said we could still go up about two-thirds of
the way if we wanted to. Sure, why not?
Murray and Ping-Hwei got some fun pictures. I kept telling
Murray to tell me what he could see around us. Some grass and prairie. Lots of
big rocks, some dirt, snow. For a while, he said there were some aspen trees,
then only tall fir trees, until finally we got almost to the tree line after
which trees couldn’t grow anymore.
That’s about where we had to stop because the road was
closed. But it was fun, lots of very swervy hair-pin roads. I’d expected to be
afraid of driving in those, but I wasn’t.
Monday, we decided to just stay at the hotel and play cards.
It’s always fun to play games with Benjamin, but this time I couldn’t bring the
Scrabble on the plane. We played many games of Uno and Spades. Benjamin won the
Uno, and, surprisingly, I won Spades. Murray played a lot more aggressively
than I did. He really didn’t want to lose.
Ping-Hwei didn’t play cards. He stayed in the room and took
advantage of the 57-inch TV.
What a joy. So much fun to spend time with Benjamin. In
October, we plan to visit Rebecca and Steve in Omaha. I’ve got a good chunk of
time before I have to think about flying again.