Mom and Dad had just returned from a three-week trip with my aunt and uncle, down the California coast and back up through Vegas and Tahoe (sophisticated travelers they). They’d had a lovely time, but while they were gone, my sis-in-law’s father died. Lynn didn’t want them to miss a minute of the vacation they’d planned for months, and so she urged them not to come back for her dad’s funeral. At home I twisted my fingers, wandered the house, checked Amtrak fares, and tried to imagine visiting Lynn and my brother Dan and all of Lynn’s family who were trying to get things accomplished the week after her dad passed away. I decided I’d be less of a bother coming to see them at the later date with the parents, so I did.

It became a journey of connections with several relatives and old friends and also with places. In Tacoma, the city where I learned to drive and watched eight showings of the original Star Wars and marched in the daffodil parade and got married, things are quite different. Though I recognize intersections and landmarks, I’d get lost if I were trying to navigate between them. Mount Tahoma high school has moved to a new building, all large and sophisticated and dwarfing its familiar totem pole. The church Dad last preached at on Roosevelt Heights is gone, replaced by four townhouses. A gravel pit near where they lived in University Place has become a world-class golf course.

Most things change. But then there’s Puget Sound, my old friend.
We drove around Point Defiance, a park where, the summer after eighth grade, we took Tim’s family to see the sights. He was eighteen then, and I was fourteen, and he was engaged to a girl back home in Illinois. (Their marriage never came about; how could it, after he’d spent time with me and Pacific Northwest scenery?)

On Friday we drove across the Narrows Bridge, viewing the new, additional bridge beside it.
Then we rode back on a ferry.
And we came to Dan and Lynn’s, and feasted and visited and talked about changes and things that stay the same.

When the young guy holding his terrier got on, I began to feel I was in Paris. Next a man entered carrying a guitar. Not long afterward he was belting out upbeat Spanish tunes (so maybe I felt I was in Madrid; anyway it was European). The people, all heading into the city for a Sunday, applauded the music, offered coins when he passed his hat.

We emerged into sunshine again a couple blocks from Notre Dame. Soon we found the cathedral.
Inside it was time for mass.

We ventured out and around the building for more views.
Can’t forget the gargoyles.
Couple more, only these are giddy gargoyles.
Next, Tim made a tiny friend.
We walked beside the Seine
and along more boulevards.

At last, I was tantalized by part of the landmark I’d been seeking.

Gee, the Louvre is big.
We didn’t even attempt the inside.
We wandered to the Arc de Triomphe.
Then as shadows lengthened we experienced a warm Paris evening.
Returning to the Seine, we rested tired toes.
I still wanted to pinch myself. I was here.


After dark we were whisked to the top of our beauty, which turned out blue (should I say bleu?),
and we viewed the world lit up below.

Tim’s aunt, still in the hospital, is doing better.

I want to show you pictures of castles far away. Settle in and relax if you can. These are from our last full day in Bavaria.

Before we left western Germany, our friends thought ahead about the festivities. They did this:
in preparation for this:

Tim doesn’t like beer, and I can’t have gluten, so we traipsed off through Munich (in the rain)


and at last found our solaces (at least they warmed the heart of one of us):Engines!

See, we traveled through this tranquil countryside.


To find that the same peaceful land housed this reminder of horror.

I came out of Dachau so glad that a group of survivors made sure people would never forget.

Then when we returned from our trip I sorted through my photos on a Saturday. That same afternoon Tim and I talked to S, a woman from our street, as she sorted pieces of her life into boxes so she could leave her home.

S used to live there with her husband and daughter, and then when she and her husband moved they left her daughter (who has a drug problem) in the home with her daughter’s son, and sometimes the boy’s dad was there, too.

S moved back after her husband left her for a younger woman.

Getting ready to go, she related some other tragedies that took place before we knew her. Relatives and friends were loading boxes to take her to her sister’s where she’s fixed up the garage to live in. “I’ll be fine,” she assured us.

I wandered back home. Folding in on my anxious self, I thought, Dachau is everywhere.





The next week S’s house stood empty. Its new owner likely bought it cheap and will fix it up, she told us, to sell. I noticed sunlight brightening the deepened burgundy on leaves covering S’s front maple. Our maple changed, too, and I remembered evil continues.

Lord have mercy.

The best part of Dachau was the grass. The trees. Growing, housing birds. No, it was the people. Schoolkids on field trips, all required to pass through here at least once. And then they could leave.

We were all free to go.

On our way from Anna and Doug’s house to the b&b near Memmingen, I rode in the back seat of Doug’s car with a traveling buddy, Graysi.

I tried not to expect anything from our upcoming lodging. We were only paying 19 euro apiece per night, after all, so I steeled myself to hold back complaints. As it turned out as we unloaded I could truthfully ooh and ahh.


(My even cuter traveling buddy, by the horse picture in our room.)
Then we ventured into Rot, the nearest village, and enjoyed dinner at a restaurant near a former monastery.

The only thing I regret looking back at our trip is that I didn’t spend a whole day soaking in the atmosphere here, watching people relate to their horses. I could have slowed pace to match the beauty (though it was c-cold out).


But I surged off each day to see our sights, and that was good, too (especially Dachau, photos coming soon). Still, if I’d have rested I might’ve been a happier traveler when from our stations Graysi and I viewed the road again on our way to Paris.

So, last I saw Tim, he was goofing off.
Here are our patient hosts, Anna and Doug.
Where’s my husband?

Shoulda known, in trouble for telling the guards puns. What would he do without me?

We’d better leave Holland now and head for Bavaria.

Homebody me. A hobbit in slippers. Ever reluctant to leave hearth and hovel, so grateful to return. Yet, the memory of the road. It goes ever on and on. Once inside you, it never quite departs, and someday I know I will again, too.