Wings

This family photo is a snapshot of where we’re at as 2022 merges into 2023. It was taken on New Year’s Eve night at our aunt and uncle’s home on Long Island. Four of us were about to drive back home to Hyde Park in a warmish rain, the old man behind the wheel fueled by caffeine and an ancient NYE Grateful Dead concert on Sirius XM radio. The tallest among us, the sharp-looking young man in the middle, would not be making that trip north with us. He was staying on Long Island in advance of an early-morning flight back to points south, where he is stationed as an active-duty member of the United States Air Force. We all wondered aloud (some through tears) when we would see our oldest son again in 2023. I reminded everyone that San Antonio is a relatively easy flight away (unless, of course, one chooses to fly on Southwest = yikes!) and that there would be occasion(s) for us to get together again. But you never know how these things work. Weeks become months and inertia is difficult to overcome. We must make the effort. Families growing into adulthood with scattered locales … this is nothing new or unique to our family. But when you live it, you live it, and as a result we must cherish these moments together and a photo like this to commemorate us all being under the same roof. Something we used to take for granted but now more the exception rather than the rule. Until our flight patterns intersect again … Happy New Year and onward to 2023. OK.