A Perfect Day in Virginia

So if this photo of my sister-in-law were taken today it would look something like this.

Thankfully there was no way back in the early 70s to hit delete or crop a slide . . . and so real life was captured in all of its cheesy splendor.

I will admit that when I first saw this image that Crecia shared, I laughed until I cried. I showed it to my wife and she said, ”I just love it so much,” and she also laughed until she cried.

Previous to this discovery, I only had the image below to remind me of that perfect day long ago in Virginia. We had just undertaken a cross country road trip from Idaho to New York City to visit my oldest brother, Lorin, his wife, Lin, and my nephew Austin.

It was Grandpa Rosel and Grandma Elaine and Mom and Dad and seven of the nine kids all packed into a VW bus. It seems we had ham sandwiches for every meal and sang a song declaring that fact every time we were asked if we wanted another.

We saw the sites in Washington, but most impressive to me was Arlington Cemetery, especially the flame burning near John Kennedy’s grave and the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The best part of the trip, however, was when we visited Lin’s parents in Virginia. They had a pool, and not a public city pool, but a private one right by their house! And, magically, their freezer was overflowing with ice cream. I remember some vague explanation that a refrigeration unit had failed somewhere and Lin’s dad had more ice cream than he could freeze; the important thing to me was that we were encouraged to eat as much as we could. Every perfect day has its challenges . . . there were monster horse flies that would bite you painfully hard, but that was offset by being able to slap your sibling from behind and explaining it away.

When night fell, there was more magic. Fireflies! You don’t see many of those in Idaho. We popped the top of the VW and set up the small sleeping area there. Through the mesh screen you could see these fanciful creatures flitting through and landing on the branches of the trees. Full of ice cream and tired from swimming, you could only keep your eyes focused on them for a few minutes before drifting off into a sweet dream.