Dear Joanie,
The summer months have flown by, and, thankfully, I have no dire news to report, after my sadness about what happened on July 4 of this year. From that time, I'm glad to say, our lives have been a little humdrum day to day.
Dougie continues with speech therapy. It's the strangest thing. There are names he cannot remember, no matter how many times he repeats them. One is the name Alex. That's your father's name (as you know), the name of a friend here at the Carillon, the name of his great-nephew, and the name of the person who will be renting our mountain house this winter. No matter what, he cannot remember the name Alex. He also has trouble with Westminster, Melanie, DeAnne, microwave, and other everyday nouns. He has difficulty explaining things, and he finds it really frustrating. He now walks with a walker, walking sticks, or a cane, depending on the situation. He reads voraciously, and we keep up with the politics of the day.
So here's what we think: we can handle this. If things get no worse, we can handle it. He is now 85, and I will be 83 in a little over a month. We have no future plans for travel. Flying has become a real headache, not just on a personal level, but with airlines canceling and airports crowded, we are just not up to the chaos of it all. We've always said that we'd travel till we couldn't, and that time may have come. But we looks back on decades of travel: to our families, the the UK ( England, Scotland, Wales, the Hebrides), Ireland, Italy ( the Cinque Terra, Florence, Venice, Lake Como, the Amalfi Coast), and France many times, as well as all over the United States. I have been to Guatemala, Vietnam, Mexico, and Greece. I always had a dream of going to Machu Pichu and Patagonia, but I think that time has passed for me. Our favorite cities have been New York, Paris, and London, all places we have been many times. We have loved exploring Canada, both in the western and the eastern coasts. I spent a wonderful summer on Prince Edward Island when your Great-Uncle Andre was a toddler. One of the very best things Dougie and I have in common is that we love to travel.
I wonder what travel will be like for you. Right now, NASA is launching another spacecraft to the moon, the first one having been in 1969, when I was 30 years old. I remember it well. This spacecraft is in preparation for a future moon landing carrying astronauts. And that future moon landing is in anticipation of a landing on the planet Mars, which then further anticipates building a colony there. Will you go to Mars, Joanie? I'm sure whatever happens will be beyond my imagination, just as my world today could not be imagined by my great grandparents, or even my grandparents and parents for that matter. I hope you will want to see the world and beyond, and I hope that that is offered to you.
A COVID update. At the Carillon, we still must wear masks in public places, but mostly Boulder is mask-free, and all schools have started in-person classes. We may get a fourth booster shot, but there is no date for that as yet. We still have a lot of cases throughout the country, with fewer deaths and hospitalizations. I wear a mask when I go into stores.
In other news, I have begun taking care of your Great-Uncle Andre's son Luca on Wednesdays when his mother Eileen goes to work as an acupuncturist and before Andre gets home from work. My first day was pretty challenging. Luca was not happy, but we managed by walking up and down mountain roads, me singing to Luca in his carriage. Here is Luca staring at me, wondering what in the world I've done with his parents:
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| Luca Kaiser, 7 months old |
We adore the pictures that we get of you and marvel that you've become a little girl, no longer a toddler, really, but, as I've said before, thoroughly engaged with you world.
I'll write again in a couple of weeks, when fall begins to take hold in Colorado.
Love,
GG Katie
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