Heading home

We’ve bought way too much and have to somehow make it fit

while letting the Pittmans get back to their normal lives.  We head out on Thursday because while our flight isn’t until 11:45am, I can imagine the problems that we could encounter trying to drive through Atlanta to get to the airport on the south side of the city while turning in our rental car.  So, we’re staying at hotel right by the

airport for our last night.  We are going to have lunch and a few hours with another Kevin today in Atlanta proper and while we’re trying to figure out if we should go by the cool bottle shop in DeKalb where the owner pointed me toward what became John’s favorite

 scotch, we get a lunch place to meet Kevin and they are down the street from each other.  It’s kismet and obviously meant to be.  What’s even more ridiculous is the whole time that John and the owner of this store are discussing scotches, dinners, and brands, Oscar is dancing to his favorite 

 songs that are playing on their radio.  The person working the register gives him a lollipop and I realize that this trip has proved that Oscar is definitely his parents’ child.  He adapts to all these people that he doesn’t know, he loves new places and things, he wants to socialize but on his terms, shop, but only if it’s on clearance and even something boring can be turned around  by the right song.  When we get back to Michigan and he wakes up on Monday morning saying, “No want to go to school.  Want to get back on boat,” I 

realize that there is no denying that we have created by genetics or force, our soul child.  A fellow traveler.  But, back in Atlanta, we are having an Indian buffet and catching up with Kevin while Oscar just stares at a couple on their lunch break who have military uniforms on.  He wants to know if they’re pilots.  I convince him to go over and finally ask and he finds out that JOY OF JOYS, they’re medics.  Which is even better to Oscar.  We head to the Hindu Temple near us, but it’s too cold to enjoy the frozen fountains and a toddler doesn’t make for a great visitor to a temple of silence with monks praying behind closed doors.  It is beautiful though.  We head to the Ponce Market too which is Atlanta’s repurposing of a crumbling urban hall into a hipster shopping area.  Oscar’s not impressed, but John and Kevin

 are buying socks, getting coffee….etc to the point that we’re going to get a ticket in the parking place we’re in.  We take our leave of Kevin and head to College Park.  It took us an hour to get a few miles down the road to I-20.  Literally….but then luckily, we avoided the major traffic and got to College Park not long after.  Of course, this driving was so boring, Oscar fell asleep again.  We visited with Kevin’s mother,

visited John’s old stomping grounds.  Then the nostalgia fell away with a  series of mishaps.  An icy McDonalds with a playland that had lost power, the wrong Super 8 in College Park, a Waffle House with okay food and the worst service ever, and it was time to get up and get going home.  The car went back, but Hartsfield doesn’t make it easy to get around the city that is that airport.  How about a moving sidewalk Atlanta?  But Oscar got to roll his suitcase everywhere and we did escalators, elevators, trams, trains again with the only problem a meltdown at security because the officer wanted me in a different line and I was suddenly Oscar’s favorite person.  Everyone knows that John is Oscar’s favorite person until suddenly he isn’t.  No other hiccups on the way home and while there was a little delay at Midway (I mean, it’s Chicago, of course there is a delay), we got to sleep in our beds after almost 3 weeks away.