Until Our Next Meeting

I’m back from Minneapolis. I feel like I owe a detailed rundown of the weekend in a blog post so lengthy that even the pikey thinks it’s too long, but honestly it’s all such a blur of activity that I can’t keep it all straight. It was too jam-packed to even remember the right order of escapades. But I will say that it was a much-needed, epic, Christmas-saturated road trip that proved with the resonant finality of a taiko ensemble unison downbeat that just because you have kids doesn’t mean you can’t still do stuff. These people did, anyway.

So. Christmas in Minneapolis. It wasn’t really colder there this weekend than any given winter day in Bowling Green, Ohio, but I must have adapted to the slightly less harsh cold of Missouri, because my old BG friends were making fun of me for shivering all the time, even indoors. I must be losing my edge.

The kids were cute. The coffee was good. The parade was good. The mall was good. The Vince Guaraldi Trio was good. The art museum was good. The concert was good. Christmas is still a couple of weeks away, but this season has already been easily more enjoyable than the past three Christmas seasons combined. Mission accomplished.

We went to see their friends’ “Bluegrassical” trio (piano, fiddle, upright bass) one evening at a florist shop. That was particularly good, I thought, but I’m so culturally starved that I would have liked anything.

I have more thoughts about fellowship, camaraderie, and classing it up, but I’ll work that out in a coming blog post. For now, I want to discuss the ride back...

So I hit a blizzard of full-on CGI proportions through the entire state of Iowa. ‘Twas a perilous journey… fraught with peril… and by the time I got to KC, the roads were much better. I stopped by Dean’s place for about an hour, as per the itinerary. We ate ravioli and he showed me more of Assassin’s Creed II. It’s awesome. Then I went to Scooter’s for some desperately-needed coffee to get me through the final three hours’ drive home. By this time, however, the roads were getting bad in KC as well.

These were the cinematic snowflakes, the picturesque ones that everybody loves to watch fall—everybody who doesn’t have to drive, that is. The Plaza was all done up in lights, and the snow complemented the scene nicely. And I happened to hear my favorite song on Sinatra’s Christmas album at that moment, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Then I went to the roof of the parking garage to see the full Plaza vista.

I always thought that that song should be used against the imagery of a guy, alone, out in the snow in the city, because it has a perfect balance of melancholy and contentedness. There I was, after a solid weekend, not knowing when we’ll meet again, but enjoying the Christmas season all the better for it.

Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow…

So, amidst a dangerous and too-long, too-sleep-deprived drive home, I was able to pause and take a mental snapshot. A stolen moment, taken from the heavily guarded trophy room in the mansion owned by a universe that keeps cock-blocking me. Eat a dick, Universe. Because now that song is mine, and you can’t ever have it back. It’s mine.

So what happens next? What and when will the next road trip be? Will we all be together, as the song goes, if the fates allow? Who knows.

Until our next meeting… “we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

Merry Christmas.