Thanksgiving

I met my folks at 30th Street Station on Tuesday evening at about 5:15. Upon walking into the station and seeing the long lines snaking across the floor, around the corner and then back onto itself, it struck me that this was the start of the Thanksgiving holiday. The train was about 20 minutes late, but other than the broken escalator, everything went well.



My mother didn't really recognize the huge beautiful statue at the east end of the station, The memorial to the Pennsylvania Railroad workers who dies during WWII. Then I realized that when she was traveling between NY and Swarthmore, this memorial would have not yet been erected. Oh, yea... There's something to think about. Been a few changes in the world since then, huh?



So we caught the R5 out to Bryn Mawr where Amalia had been waiting for us and then drove on back to the house where we had leftovers for dinner. Dropped them off at the Wayne Hotel which worked out pretty well. Both a nice place to stay as well as very convenient, both to our place as well as to Wayne's cute little downtown. Dad comments that from the one intersection you could see three coffee shops, I mentioned the three other coffee shops that were right around the corner from there that you couldn't see...



Wednesday evening I drove to the airport to pick up Jimmy and Beth and Stephanie. They didn't make it into First Class, but they did get exit rows.



[insert tons of preperation and cleaning, too much bread, too many pies and cookies, people coming and going, and many folks all talking loudly...]



Saturday morning, I picked Mom and dad up at the hotel and we took a very scenic and roundabout drive to the train station. The penultimate stop was at the old Philadelphia Waterworks where we enjoyed the air, the breeze, the beautiful weather, the vista out over the river and the beautifully restored old architecture. We then circled around the front of the art museum and made it back to 30th Street Station about 5 minutes before they started letting folks down onto the platform.



All in all I think it was a pretty successful visit. And I am pretty sure that everyone had enough to eat...



ps: I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that Storm seemed to get pretty high marks all around for being very well behaved with all the strangers as well as all of the food at snout level. I don't think we had one accident the whole time and we even had a couple of successful signalings that "I need to go out." So that was all good.



pps: We never really did a "prayer" or a "blessing" but let it be known that I think it IS important to take a minute and to recognize and acknowledge all of the things which we have for which we ought to be thankful. And all of the people throught the world who have so much less. And that often times, our attitude is a more important factor in our overall happiness than is the quantity of the things that we have. But this holiday is not about our happiness, it is not about us, it is about the things beyond us, it is essentially, for me anyway, about other people and their happiness.