Soixante-huit

With daylight saving last night, we "sprang forward" in time, losing an hour.  Unfortunately it meant that by the time we went to bed it was 2.30 and we got up at 9am, which has made for a very tiring day.  And even though it was lovely to arrive home this evening at 7pm and it was just dark at that time, I am exhausted.  I miss the hour that was taken from me.  Well, I suppose I just had to give back the stolen hour from last November, when we "fell back". 

Today we went to visit old friends who live a long distance away.  It is 65 miles one way, about 105km, which is almost the same distance as going from Grahamstown to Port Elizabeth.

When you went from Grahamstown to PE, it was a trip planned well in advance, for which you had your car serviced so that nothing would go wrong on the long drive, and it only happened when you had to fetch someone like your mother from the airport in Port Elizabeth, or you were flying off to a conference somewhere yourself, or you were expecting twins and had to go to a gynaecologist, of which there were none in our little Grahamstown, or your son had a burst eardrum and had to have his adenoids out in the hospital.  It was a huge trip, taking the whole day.  It was a journey.  You came back with presents from the big city for the children if they had had to remain behind. 

We always went for a walk along the pier.

And here we are in Massachusetts where people frequently drive this far just for their work.  For a couple of years Tim's work was situated an hour and a quarter's drive from our house!  Which meant he was in the car for at least two and a half hours a day!

We often listen to podcasts of radio shows like RadioLab, or This American Life on long journeys, or music, which is easier because then you can talk when you want to, without interrupting an important part of the story.  For talk is something which happens easily on long car trips, often about deep subjects.  I love driving long distances with one of my children, as you have such interesting and real conversations at that time, and being from a family of four children there is often not much chance to have your mother to yourself, or as a mother to have just one child to myself.

Today on our way there we didn't need the radio as Nick talked to us almost the whole way on the phone, telling us all about his amazing weekend in New York.  It seems that he met some very interesting and friendly people, saw some wonderful Art, had lovely and magnificent conversations, which could be because he is very friendly and interesting himself, and interested in others' stories.  It was a lovely hour which made the distance seem much shorter.

At our friends' house, we had a lovely laughing time eating a lunch which lasted about two hours, and one of the topics of conversation was travel, specifically flying to distant places.  Karen hasn't flown for a long time, and she pointed out how much I have flown over the last few years.  So on the way home, with Simon and Garfunkel singing nostalgically in the background, I stared out at the snowy land, the forests of trees, each with its own little circle of brown earth marking where the trunk is rooted, and I wondered if this is because trees are living things, so they must therefore be warmer than the snow?  I'm not sure why it actually happens, but it seems as if they are all just melting the snow immediately around them with the warm sap of their lives.

And I thought about all the travelling I have done since moving to America when I was 45.  Before that I had just journeyed back and forth between Cape Town and Grahamstown.  The last time I had left the country of South Africa was on an overseas trip with my parents when I was 12 years old. 

The largest distance I have journeyed was to Vietnam almost three years ago now.  And because I am so tired I am going to put up some of my photographs from that time, and carry on with the travelling theme tomorrow.