Last night was certainly one of the nicest evenings of my life.
It wasn’t a holiday — but it felt like one.
Sarah came home from Alaska. Sarah’s boyfriend/partner, Matt, was also here. Aaron came home from Boone.
Back up.
Yesterday morning, I put on my glasses (bifocals, of course) and noticed that the 4 year old, well scratched, left lens was missing. They were make-do frames anyway, so the lenses popped out a lot. After spending the first hour of my day crawling around on my hands and knees looking for it, I started calling around — with one eye opened and one eye shut.
Here in Salisbury, I was looking at 7 to 10 business days for a new pair of glasses.
So I drove half blind to Charlotte and got a new pair of unscratched, awesome glasses. I was a little worried about the doctor’s hyperactivity. She only took about a minute finding my prescription. But she was right on the money. I can see! Alas, those babies were expensive, and it left us sort of temporarily strapped.
And this with our whole family gathering for the first time in a year.
My wonderful children told me to stop worrying. They went to the grocery store and returned with lots of nice stuff.
While I visited my Mom and my wife worked at her computer, the kids (who are well into adulthood) fixed dinner. We had salad, incredible borscht, wine, awesome bread.
Then they took me downtown and bought me beer.
While we were at Brick Street Tavern, my oldest and bestest friend, Robert Jones, was spotted walking down the sidewalk on Fisher Street. I banged on the window and he came in. He’s like an uncle to my children, so that was a great reunion.
Later, we went to The Salty Caper and had more beer. They talked to me. And listened to me. A lot.
It was really a great night.