Today I start my push for the summit. Naw, just kidding. Today’s trip will be anything but heroic. I’m simply going home. There will be no summit, no pole, no head of the river to discover. Just a short trip down well-traveled highways to my house. It is sort of poetic though, that high in the sky over my cousin’s house is a waypoint airline pilots use as a navigation aide. I use it, too. Last year I passed through here on my way to Tennessee. This year it’s on my way back from Kansas.

The cousin in question is actually my late wife’s cousin. I guess that makes him my cousin-in-law, but that’s a mouthful. It’s just easier to say he’s my cousin and let it go at that. If someone needs to know the exact relationship, they’ll ask, and when was the last time anyone questioned you on a subject like that? I can tell you, never. Unless, of course, it’s another cousin, and then they might have a question or two.

Right now, think I hear him stirring in his part of the house. So, I probably need to wrap this up. People like to chat with their company, and it’s pretty rude to say, can you wait until I finish this, as though, I’m in the final throes of writing War and Peace, when really, it’s just 300 words of relative nonsense about a trip I took to see family, which is something pretty much everyone does all the time. So, that’s it for now. And I’ll see you tomorrow.

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