Oak trees, sisters, rain, photographs, fish

A few days ago, Gven Golly and I put some miles on her Honda named 'Olive' and got together with some important people in our lives, so our long weekend trip deserves to be chronicled.

At Charlie and Helen's

We got to the Cumberland Plateau and Fairfield Glade, where my parents live, in time for supper. While Mom cooked, Dad took Gven and me on a tour of their neighbors' home renovations, where he has scavenged a lot of lumber that otherwise would have gone to some landfill. Charlie is resourceful that way, and he is careful to check with the contractor first. If they're throwing stuff away, he saves them the trouble. Then he showed us the basement floor he has constructed entirely of 2x10s, 2x8s, 2x6s, and 2x4s left by the builders. It's quite a piece of work.

We enjoyed a nice dinner of pork, rice, and broccoli, went out for frozen custard dessert, and talked about this and that. Mom and Dad are going to Seattle in September for a reunion with Dad's sisters. We brought along a few of our family photos for Aunt Marilyn to include in the updated edition of the Golly family genealogy. Charlie's two brothers are both dead now, and his three sisters all live on the West Coast (Washington, Oregon, California).

We also talked about a piece of property in the northern Lower Peninsula, near the tip of the pinkie, that Mom and Dad have held onto for quite a few years without building on it. I'm planning to go up there soon to check it out and see what's what. So if you don't hear from me for awhile, it's because I headed up the country and pitched my tent at Lot 1000, Manistee Heights.

At the Oarhouse

It rained that night good and steady, but it was a pretty morning's drive across southeast Tennessee and north Georgia to Dahlonega and the picturesque site of the restaurant beside the river (Oostanaula?) where we held Gven's mother's 75th birthday party. It's called 'the Oarhouse' because its right on the river, not 'the Orehouse' because Dahlonega was the site of a gold rush in the 1820s, and not 'the Whorehouse' just because.

The whole gang was there: the three sisters and their husbands, three of the five grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, a grandson-in-law, a grandboyfriend-in-law, and even an ex-husband. Sharon had her video camera going almost continuously, and several other cameras were roaming the room recording the moment. One-year-old Chase was the star. Happy birthday, Nancy.

We feasted on another fabulous meal (I recommend the salmon) and a chocolate mousse cake made by the grandson-in-law chef from Macon, then regrouped at my sister-in-law's house outside Cumming. Some of us watched Warner-Robins, Georgia, defeat Lubbock, Texas, in the Little League World Series.

We checked on the progress of Nancy's newly constructed apartment on the ground floor of her youngest daughter's house, and it looks great. Then it rained pretty hard, which was welcome in that parched part of the country, and after a minor bit of miscommunication, Gven and I went on down Georgia 400 to my sister's new place in the city.

At Jo Jo's

I had never been to her condo around the corner from the Emory campus, but the neighborhood is familiar, and it seems like a good fit. Jo Jo and her husband Burt now live in separate houses, and it seems to be working out well. She made Gven and me comfortable in her spare bedroom and made blueberry pancakes in the morning. We talked about her job in the Ethnic Studies Program at Emory, my job at Publishing Conglomerate, and the politics of language, a subject we always seem to find our way back to.

Our Sunday itinerary took us over to the old house on Haygood Drive, where we picked up Burt, and into Decatur, where we visited Jessi's birthplace and Oakhurst Community Garden. Someone has put a lot of work into turning a vacant lot into a great big garden. We managed to kill an hour (or two?) cruising Candler Park and Little Five Points, finally stopping for lunch at Grandma Luke's on Euclid (the hummus is excellent) before finally making our way to the High Museum in Midtown.

As soon as we got there, it started raining buckets, so we got a little wet between the garage and the entrance. No matter. We had all the time we needed in the Annie Liebovitz portrait exhibit; the images of William Burroughs, Lance Armstrong, Johnny Cash and family, and Cindy Crawford were well worth it. That night we went to Top Spice, a Thai/Polynesian restaurant in Toco Hills, where the Tiger beer and Thai catfish are out of sight.

With very little pomp and ceremony, that was our celebration of Jo Jo's fifth time around the calendar of 12 lunar new years, the birthday where a mature person has experienced all the astrological animals in all five elements. Not that anyone we know is mythically inclined enough to dwell on the transformative power of living in a garden among giant trees, little potted plants, feeding the birds on the balcony, and nurturing the souls of visiting friends. Happy birthday, Jo Jo.