It's one thing when your children have not yet left their home and have lived with you from infancy to young adulthood. Everything is close and emotion-packed and routine. It's yet another, when over the years they leave to live on their own, gain their own little families and return from time to time to 'visit'. We've been without visits for almost two years. Our children are now in their early 60s and late 50s. Our routine is no longer their routine. So it's an adjustment all around when you've got 'house guests' for a week, even if they're your own children. They're your children irrespective of how old they are and you have become.

 

Visits are both relaxing and tense. Relaxing in the sense that you are together again, despite the stretch of intervening years and the complicated things that have happened in each others' lives independently of familial relationships. The bond is irreversible, it's there and it's like tensile steel. Yet, they're guests at this juncture and there is the tension of being aware that you're hosting them with all the obligations that implies.

 

Meal times went well; we know what our children prefer, not necessarily what we do, so we defer to them. We spend time together, discussing issues ranging from the familiar to the unfamiliar; personal to impersonal. We share our daily experiences with them and they're accommodating to our priorities up to a point. Our home is large enough to accommodate us together in comfort and to allow for time away from each other when it's called for. Other family members telephone and conversations are shared. Our bed times are certainly different; when we go up to bed at a late hour, they're even later.

When they arrived almost a week earlier to take up where we left off weeks ago when they were by just briefly for a day and a night, we were of course, delighted and enthusiastic, happy to be together again. By yesterday a kind of exhaustion set in from being constantly on the alert to make certain everything was right, that meals were served to their liking, and that meant both Irving and I working to that end. I did a lot of baking; pies, cupcakes, breads, cookies; no matter how mature your children are, these are the elementals of memory. And Irving manned the barbecue and made ice cream. It was all fun and a pleasure, but it adds up.

 

We enjoyed long hikes through the forest trails together every day. Our daughter-in-law is quite knowledgeable about plants and that was fun. But this morning they had a lot to do in preparation for their return to Toronto and it was already stifling hot, so we agreed we'd get out early to the ravine and leave them to all their arrangements. On our return they completed their packing while we showered and then we all enjoyed our last breakfast together for the week, and they were speedily off.

 

Their drive back to Toronto isn't quite as time-consuming as their drive from Toronto to Ottawa weeks ago, when the following day they drove on to New Brunswick and then to Nova Scotia where our daughter-in-law's family lives. The trip, primarily, is to spend time with her mother who turned 90 this past winter and whose health suddenly turned a bit seriously compromised. 

 

As for us, we kind of collapsed after their departure. Jackie and Jillie will once again become accustomed to a quieter house interior, less comings-and-goings, fewer voices and distractions. That's another bit of entertainment they shared with us; our daytime and nighttime visitors on the porch. They had never seen an entire family of raccoons contentedly nibbling away on goodies so close at hand. 

 

We picked ourselves up shortly afterward, cleaned up the kitchen, and went out to do our weekly food shopping. Some things just don't change. What a contrast for our two little dogs; suddenly a house that was full of people reverted to one where only two little dogs sat, awaiting the return of half the number they had so recently adjusted to.