Saturday morning in our new home

Time for some reflections on the 'joy of life after 65,' living in Harrison as empty nesters.

Even with the absence of a work schedule, life seems to keep a pace of its own sans an employer, a formal schedule, or an externally imposed daily schedule. And weekends remain much as they did in the past, only now it is because Dena is on a schedule and weekends are -- as they have always been -- usually an unscheduled time for the two of us. However, weekends ten years ago were very busy, and scheduled, primarily with travel soccer, tournaments, CYO basketball, and driving Jane and Gaby to their respective social engagements. I still find great joy seeing those memories surface on my Facebook page, of those Stone Harbor Columbus Day tournaments (only you can't call it that any more), Saturday and Sunday soccer matches around Baltimore County, pumpkin-picking trips to southern Pennsylvania, evening drop offs and morning pick ups for sleepovers, Loyola basketball games, dances, parties, and more.

The ongoing political turmoil created more by the progressive politicians in the name of pandemic control has proven to me that it was a wonderful escape, even a fortunate coincidence, that we came to Wisconsin when we did. Watching the craziness from afar gives us a good sense of serenity and gratitude, happy that we are here (and able to help Abe and Jane) and even happier -- perhaps -- that we are "not there," referring to the tumult in Maryland, Baltimore and Loyola.

To be fair, the never-ending schedule of doing laundry, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, watering grass, plants and shrubs, paying bills, dealing with and paying for service contracts and subscriptions, and even shopping for groceries creates sort of a groundhog day existence, "Didn't I just do this yesterday?"

Turning seventy two weeks ago was also a reminder of how most of my life is behind me and, as I tell Gaby, I am at the stage of my life where I spend more time relishing fond memories than in trying to create new memories. Not that there is no future, there is just a lot more of the past, and plenty of great memories upon which to reflect, including growing up in Eden, picking grapes, developing crushes on scores of girls, experiencing athletic triumphs and defeats, seeing parts of the world that 98% of Americans will never see, and more.

And Saturdays in October still means Penn State football, thinking of Ed and the Nittany Lion games we attended, in State College, Syracuse, Lincoln (NE), Columbia (MO), and Pittsburgh. The tailgates on the 1960s, while I was in high school, were probably the best experiences -- rising before dawn in Eden, driving four hours to State College, tailgating, watching Penn State play great traditional rivals such as Army, Boston College, West Virginia, Navy and Syracuse, then driving home with a stop for dinner, maybe in DuBois, before arriving back in Eden maybe 14 hours after we had left. Sometimes the drive was in snow. I don't recall any of those early games being in the rain. I do recall some glorious fall foliage on the journey. Beaver Stadium held about 56,000 fans then, half of what it holds today. While I may have seen a Rip Engle coached team, Joe Paterno was the icon he would be for years before events spiraled out of control just before his death. One game dad even had the Airco jet available, and we flew into Williamsport, drove rental cars to the game, and returned via Williamsport, an airport with some of the scariest mountains surrounding the airport. In the late eighties, State's Charley Maguire hosted a game; Joe and Gail Fox and I stayed at his house and experienced the trek from Atherton Street to the stadium, much as I had when we stayed a few times at the Nittany Lion Inn in the sixties, or when I lived on Allen Street in 1975. By 1990, other than two home games with dad or Larry Timm, attending Penn State home football became a memory, replaced by televised games and then comparing notes with dad after the game.

These days, I am caught up with Holy Spirit for my local "social network," as tiny as that is and how distant I feel from the parens I work with, parents who are young enough o be my own children.