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A Month of Globe Trotting: Pennsylvania
Sep. 16th, 2013 03:55 pmBack in August I had the chance to visit my parents in Manchester. I almost never make the drive home. It's a sizable road trip, usually there is something going on in Boston. There are also a lot of mixed feelings about returning to the town where I grew up in. Some of those problems are rooted in family. My boss wanted me to upgrade two of our new offices to our WAN, which necessitated my presence there. It would be a nice chance to break new my car in (still feeling the love), so I drove down the last Sunday in July. Thus began my harrowing journey.
My route took me through lots of traffic, enough to extend my trip by two hours. I had a brief amount of time to de-stress with my folks before going to sleep. It turns one sight had a different IP address than what we were told, and the other site didn't have a static IP address at all! This negated all the work I had done programming the routers before I left, but I was able to re-program them at the site (there was considerable wait on getting the second address). Stress levels were high again, and I was eager to return to Boston, but my parents convinced me to stay around for a bit of dinner before I left.
While waiting for my sister's to arrive for dinner, I had a chance to visit one of their houses. Both of my sister's are nurses, and the youngest owns a house near where we grew up. I took a walk through and it was very nice, I felt proud of her for coming this far in her life. We returned to my parent's house, and they showed up shortly after.
I was struck by two things at dinner. One was the sight of the old maple tree in our yard, a tree I climbed in and picked cicada shells off and dove into leaf piles when it shed every fall. The tree had been infected and died, what was left was a leafless husk that would soon be cut down and removed. The other thing that struck my was the attitude of my sisters. My memories of growing up with them were dominated by the constant fighting among us. They often devolved into huge screaming matches, loud enough that I'm sure people two streets away could hear us. When my sisters recalled our childhood, the fights weren't what they recalled. They remembered how I would stick up for them when they were picked on, even to the point of bringing a knife on the bus to threaten people (the knife was never used.) Their memories were all a lot more positive, and they expressed an inter state in visiting Boston. Both are extremely busy, but they made the effort.
It made me think about how we view the past, and what memories we hold on to. I saw that sometimes things from your past change, or die. It may be time to acknowledge the past happened, and that it passed on. It may be time to interact with my sisters again, not as warring children, but as adults who have all faced challenges and heartbreaks, and learn to treat each other with wisdom and respect.
My route took me through lots of traffic, enough to extend my trip by two hours. I had a brief amount of time to de-stress with my folks before going to sleep. It turns one sight had a different IP address than what we were told, and the other site didn't have a static IP address at all! This negated all the work I had done programming the routers before I left, but I was able to re-program them at the site (there was considerable wait on getting the second address). Stress levels were high again, and I was eager to return to Boston, but my parents convinced me to stay around for a bit of dinner before I left.
While waiting for my sister's to arrive for dinner, I had a chance to visit one of their houses. Both of my sister's are nurses, and the youngest owns a house near where we grew up. I took a walk through and it was very nice, I felt proud of her for coming this far in her life. We returned to my parent's house, and they showed up shortly after.
I was struck by two things at dinner. One was the sight of the old maple tree in our yard, a tree I climbed in and picked cicada shells off and dove into leaf piles when it shed every fall. The tree had been infected and died, what was left was a leafless husk that would soon be cut down and removed. The other thing that struck my was the attitude of my sisters. My memories of growing up with them were dominated by the constant fighting among us. They often devolved into huge screaming matches, loud enough that I'm sure people two streets away could hear us. When my sisters recalled our childhood, the fights weren't what they recalled. They remembered how I would stick up for them when they were picked on, even to the point of bringing a knife on the bus to threaten people (the knife was never used.) Their memories were all a lot more positive, and they expressed an inter state in visiting Boston. Both are extremely busy, but they made the effort.
It made me think about how we view the past, and what memories we hold on to. I saw that sometimes things from your past change, or die. It may be time to acknowledge the past happened, and that it passed on. It may be time to interact with my sisters again, not as warring children, but as adults who have all faced challenges and heartbreaks, and learn to treat each other with wisdom and respect.
