Monday, May 31, 2010

a very southern Memorial Day



Oh, back to reality again--all the relatives have gone home and we will be getting used to being at home again. I was so sleepy this morning when it was time to get up and take David to work, and as always, on mornings when I must get up early, Dennis slept in. We had to wake him up, actually, and I wished that we had brought both cars home last night. We might not have made it to the lake in time to say our goodbyes to everyone, though, and we did enjoy seeing them off. It won't be for long--Ju-Ju and Steve will be back for July 4th and we'll be seeing Gigi even before that.

Dennis asked me on the way home "are we going to have a Hunt Egg again, Mommy, when everyone comes back?" and it took me a while to understand that he meant an egg hunt. I explained that the next holiday would be July 4th, and he asked what we'd do on that day. I told him about fried chicken and fireworks and boat rides and eating watermelon on the screened porch (our plans thus far). He immediately said "and I can play with Mirella's James" and I had to really think back to know what he meant. Last year, toward the end of May, his cousins were here from Washington, and just after they finished eating watermelon on the porch, Granny gave them each some Thomas train cars. Mirella got the only engine, James, and Dennis still remembers that! Amazing! I had to tell him that Caedmon and Mirella would not be here this summer and he was disappointed, but I told him all about their coming move to Texas and how we'd take our camper on a trip to see them sometime.

I tried to think of a holiday appropriate activity today, and we picked up David from work and stopped to get dollar burgers (am still not in cooking mode after all that spoiling on the cruise). We had a 'car picnic' on our way to the Confederate Memorial Cemetery here, and we got out to look around at the soldiers' graves and explain to Dennis what it meant (because he asked "are these the soldiers that put Jesus on the cross?"). It's a beautiful park and he enjoyed running around and sliding down the flag poles, but later I happened to think that a confederate cemetery visit might have been a completely un-American thing to do today when we remember those who died for our country. Oh, well. They were Americans who fought and died here for what they believed was for the good of the country... And we aren't really near a war memorial... We had a nice time, anyway, and we found one tombstone that gave a name and rank and listed the job as Scout for some general that I should have written down the name of, and the stone also said INDIAN. We wonder if it was a Native American soldier. One day we'll actually visit there when the museum is open.

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