Another holiday weekend is in the books. Of course, this was a big one, a major Christian holiday, and I suppose it remains to be seen how everyone lives the message. Mostly, I think, people will just go back to work and focus on the task at hand. I know that’s what I did when I was in the work force. Schedules popped back up, problems remained to be solved, and everyone talked about what they did for the weekend. Mostly positive, semi-relaxing stuff because the runup to Easter is nothing like the runup to Christmas and the holiday itself seldom involves multiple visits to relatives.

Yesterday, I went to my cousin’s new house outside Fredericksburg to dine with her sisters and their families. It was nice. Our fathers were brothers. The fathers are gone now as are the mothers and we’re the aged ones, the ones the little kids look at with suspicion because they don’t see us all the time and they wonder who in the heck we are. But we ta-ta after them because they’re the future and we’d like to be remembered, but it gets increasingly difficult the further out you get on the cousin stream, toward once and twice removed.

Today, I’m up early to enjoy the cool morning air, feed the cats, as usual, and finish getting ready for a trip to the Frio for a few days. It’s been a long while since I dipped my toes in that river. I believe the kids were young and we went to Garner. As parks go it was a little too populated for our taste and that was a long while back. Our preferred west Texas river is the Nueces, partly because we have access to a semi-private stretch of the river, which came from the luck of the draw and us traveling all over with friends back in the early 70s to camp and canoe Texas. There were a lot fewer people on the roads back in those days. But today will be nice, regardless, there are new friends and new songs to sing and time moves on whether we like it or not.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale