Yesterday wasn’t a typical day at the office for me. First of all, I didn’t go to the office yesterday. I’m not at home. After church on Sunday, I headed west and drove to the town where I grew up. My sister and I are trustees of a piece of family property there and it is time for some spring chores and getting the place ready for summer use. It will be the place of the wedding of the daughter of a cousin this summer, a place for several family gatherings, and hopefully we’ll have a few paying guests who will provide some modest income to help with taxes and insurance. Like any place, there are lots of maintenance chores. There were a couple of trees that blew down in winter storms. There was grass that needed to be mowed. There were some chores needed in the cabins to make them a bit more comfortable. So we had our version of a work weekend to get things ready.

For me, coming to this place always has the flavor of a trip down memory lane. It is where we spent our summers as children and as soon as school was out we wanted to spend as much time as possible here, playing in the river, fishing, exploring and experiencing things that weren’t possible with the schedule of the school year. At the very beginning of my career as a minister my mother was widowed and most years I made trips to assist with getting the place ready for her to move in for the summer and to button it up for the winter. As she grew older and we moved to Rapid City, there were several years when I would come to the river, open the place up, turn on the water and then make a trip to Portland, Oregon to bring her back to her summer place in Montana. Then in the fall, I’d take a few days to take her back to her winter home and close up the place.

This year the water was turned on and the shutters removed before I made my trip. My sister will be the summer caretaker and she had things in pretty good shape. I’ve always been able to see my mother in my sister and it feels very natural to have her staying here. There are, of course, differences. When we were kids, we had my father’s hobby animals, donkeys and chickens, on the place. My sister has a dozen bum lambs that need to be bottle fed three times a day. I can remember when we didn’t have cell phones and then for many years after we got cell phones they didn’t work at the river place. Now there is clear cell service and high speed Internet as well.

I’ve had a wonderful visit to the home of my childhood. We cut and stacked wood, mowed grass, put up a new light fixture, and took care of the animals. But, as when I was a child, there was time for exploring, looking for mushrooms, checking out the river, and looking at the birds. The sandhill cranes are making a fuss across the river and I saw and osprey fishing. The trees are full of song birds and the mountains are looking their best still covered in snow. High water is still several weeks away. It is still cold in the high country.

I’ve got to head home today and get back to my usual duties. Wednesday begins with multiple meetings in the morning and activities that last into the evening. I’ll be back to the usual pace of life soon.

Meanwhile, as I was enjoying a day off, our son also had a day off from his usual work. Although he usually works Monday through Friday he has the ability for some flexibility in his work schedule and can do some of his work remotely with his computer from his home or other locations. Most of his time away from work is time focused on his family. With young children there are lots of demands on an active father. He enjoys his role as a father and invests lots of time caring for his children and helping them explore the world. Like me, he has learned that from time to time doing something that breaks up the routine spurs creative thoughts and helps to increase productivity at work. It is counter intuitive that taking a break from work would enable you to get more done, but that is often the case. It appears that our son has learned this at a younger age than his father and I’m very proud of the balance that he has achieved.

In the evening I received a text message and some pictures of his day. While my day included pictures of lambs and tractors and mushrooms growing on the side of a cottonwood tree, his were quite different.

When I was a child my parents were both pilots and getting into an airplane was a very natural experience for me. I loved flying and enjoyed it when I tagged along with my dad on a flight. The love of flying was instilled in me in such a way that it was something that was important for me to pass on. We were partners in an airplane when our children were little and the grew up flying with me. Our son has some fond memories of airplane adventures and I can see a bit of his grandparents’ love of flying in him. This is especially meaningful for me as he was born after my father passed away.

Our son invested part of his day off in jumping out of an airplane. I’ve never done that. My father did and spoke often of the experience. He was a member of the World War II caterpillar club, a group of pilots whose lives had been saved by silk parachutes. I never made a parachute jump, but yesterday was our son’s second.

It was not a typical day at the office for either of us!

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.