The vacation is over. It wasn’t all week, it was just two days. Maybe three, if you count the last day. There were fish caught and steaks eaten. Devoured, really. When you fish all day and then you grill steaks at 11 pm over an open flame, there’s little decorum left once the temperature reaches medium. The weekend was for celebrating, 50 years of tolerable marriage between my mother and father, which is nice. And now, Monday morning, the guests have left and life has returned to normal. I love my normal life.
My children are young, but they’re becoming less so. My son is 13 and my daughter is 10, and they are growing and aging, but it’s different from the way that I’m growing and aging. This morning, over the last breakfast, there was mention of my children and how they should be traveling. They should come to Colorado, the guests said, where there are mountains. There is fly fishing in those mountains, rocky creeks with huge trout. My son should experience that, because he needs to. He should travel, see the world, gain experiences. He should go to that place where my daughter can shop with her aunt, and my son can fish with his uncle. If only they’d go there, then they’d know just how great that other place really is.
But now that talk is over, because now they’re gone and we’re still here. We’re here because we love it here, because Wisconsin isn’t a place you end up on accident. It’s a place you get live if you’re lucky.