It is early July and we are taking our three youngest grandsons to France. In fact, we are already here. On the first leg, from San Francisco to Paris, I would look over the seat back from time to time checking how they were doing. Always I was met by glowing and engaged eyes, as the on-board entertainment system captured them with games and an occasional movie. Mostly games. Ten hours and thirty minutes in a seat without a wink of sleep. I had a pretty good idea what the next flight would be like, the hour and one-half to Nice. They were zonked. They barely moved, leaned into me occasionally, and when one would open his eyes for a few seconds he was not really awake.
This was mostly Jann’s idea, and a great one at that. It is one of those things that grandmas pass along in silent messages and whispers. Our first grandson got a two-week trip to Italy a few years ago, but we made the mistake of taking him out of school in February to visit Rome, Venice, and Pompeii. Apparently, and unknown to us, that frigid and unnaturally short winter month is absolutely crucial to the eventual success of any serious student and, consequently, we were sentenced to hours of fruitless math homework each day. He wasn’t even asked to submit a report on what he had learned on the trip. No further comment is required. This time we swore a secret oath to not endure that again. Why in the heck are grandparents responsible for homework anyway? That is not in our job description.
Tonight our only goal is to get some dinner into them at a nice local restaurant that claims to have a unique pizza for each of the states in the USA. Last time I counted the pies on the menu I could only find about thirty, but then… there was once a time when that was pretty much the entire United States of America.
We have come a long way as a nation. Founded out of necessity, not perfect by any means, and still growing. We have a lot to be thankful for, and a lot we should still hope to accomplish.
