Is love where you look?

"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam
be it ever so humble, There's no place like home."
~ John Howard Payne

Being gone a week can be refreshing. It's the dickens traveling in a car for hours for me, though. The trip straight through would be about 6 1/2 hours, but I just can't quiet make that and not be totally asleep for two days afterwards.

So I break up the trip and stop in and take advantage of the kind hospitality of my relatives. This last trip I stopped to visit my sister both up and back. She and her husband share a home with one of her daughters and her husband and their two children. My sister is younger than I and has 4 grandchildren!! None of my kids are even married yet.

She has custody of one of her grandsons who is in the fourth grade. (So that puts three boys in the house ages 5 to 10).

When I arrived I was greeted with a glass of wine at the back door - long story, but I had gotten "lost" on or near 429, kept losing cell service because I was in the middle of the real nowhere - yes, Virginia, there is a nowhere -- and had everyone a little bit freaked out, but as my husband had always reminded me 'dear, you have a map...' so I managed to save myself while aging my parents and family ...

so anyway, I was comfortable with my feet up and my sister thrusts upon me Nathan's school back pack and began to unload his work in my lap for me to review. And then came this huge pamphlet looking item and my sister was totally freaked out about a science project that was required for the Science Fair at his school. She was distressed because the notice said "the parents and child" were to do this project together. I don't know why exactly, but I thought this was so funny that this excited them so. She was sure they couldn't do this! and sure they wouldn't have the time or ability! And just sure, so sure This Was Impossible!!!

I told her not to worry, reminded her that this was 4th grade we were dealing with, just give me 5 minutes on Goggle, and I was certain to solve her problem.

After a brief search I came up with the idea ~ not a soft burrito ~ but a plan for a science project that would allow my great nephew to do the project at home and the parents not go crazy. Four petri dishes, some cotton swabs, a little saliva and some gelatin, and one notebook, and I think the child will get an 'A' if he practices observation and takes his notes on a daily basis while awaiting the mold to grow. Oh yes, and two cats besides, one male, one female...

I went through the booklet that was sent home, helped them get up-to-date on what was due, which was naming the project, writing the hypothesis, and listing their supplies. After I walked them through it, I think they began to feel that this was doable even though a few hours before my arrival, they were ready for the Prozac farm.

I have got to say, it felt good, it felt really, really good to help them. It felt good to know something. It felt good to solve a problem. It felt good to help my sister simplify something in her life as she works so hard. And it felt good to take the fear out of 4th grade.

It's funny how things work out sometimes. You find yourself somewhere and think sometimes, 'what am I doing here?' ...and really, you are so needed just at that time. You might not know it at the time, but have faith. And then keep it.

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, 
flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. 
Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, 
certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. 
- Robert Louis Stevenson 

"Home again, home again, jiggity jig."