25 July 2022

On Monday, my last morning in Portage, I for the first time spy the pair of Sandhill Cranes that visit the Andrew home most every morning to enjoy the dried corn left out for them.  Seeing them is a timely treat, and racing to the window in my underwear affords the chance to photograph them, if also a brief moment of embarrassment when I realize I am not alone in the room.    What follows my partially-clad photo shoot is a welcome breakfast of eggs, bacon, and Chad’s excellent blueberry pancakes, chased with a farewell cup of Pero.  I pack up my suitcase and join Rob to take a last walk around the Saddle Ridge neighborhood, golf course, and marina, and on the way catch up on more Andrew family back story. Meanwhile, Jan and Chad mow their lawn.

One last time we all gather at the dining table to sample and judge some of the root beers and sodas we brought back from the Museum of Root Beer the previous Saturday.  The winner:  not a root beer, but Caruso’s Dark Cream Italian Style Soda, deliciously rich with vanilla.  Leave it to the Italians.

Rob and Pam once more undertake the long drive to return me to the Milwaukee airport, a ride that includes their farewell gift of Whooping Crane earrings, a thoughtful souvenir from the Crane Foundation.  My flight is a bit delayed, so I fortify myself for the journey ahead with a pesto chicken flatbread and an IPA for early dinner, and finish the book I’ve brought, Jenny Diski’s Skating to Antarctica, a memoir of travel and dysfunctional family romance.  I recognize the phenomenon of travel evoking memory as it did for Diski:  strange how new horizons often conjure the familiar, and prove foil to the past, the measure against which we understand the present.

The flight home from Baltimore to Manchester is also delayed, and when I take my place at the Southwest stanchion, Boarding Group A, Position 27, the guy next to me complains he’s been traveling all day, missing connections because of ripple effect delays caused when Dallas Love Field Airport in Texas was locked down earlier that day:  a 37-year-old woman had fired several rounds in the ticket counter area before she herself was shot by a police officer “in the lower extremities,” and taken to hospital.  Again, an inexplicable shooting.  And so it goes.

I finally get home about 2 am, shower, and head straight to my own bed.  Only the next morning do I see that my clivia plant, relative of my many amaryllis (all in the family!), has at long last begun to bloom in my absence.  That’s a welcome sight.  I am home again.

Today at the Market Basket, the first chrysanthemums are on display.  It’s only early August. But fall is on the way. Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.