When I was a child, there were multiple times when my grandparents—both sets—would come and take us off our parent’s hands, usually with some grand adventure in mind. As a kid you did not care where you were off to, only that you were going some place with the people that enjoyed spoiling you.
I took solo train trips to Atlanta when I was five and six with my fraternal grand parents, and my maternal GPs did much the same, showing us all the old Florida sites: Mermaids in Weeki Wachee, Silver Springs—where they filmed all those great Tarzan swimming scenes—Marineland, and all the others that dotted that warm, sunny state before Disney put their stamp over all of it.
Summer trips with grandparents always held promise for the summer, some time away from the everyday norm. So, it was perfectly logical that we take our grandchild with us on this latest trip back to my hometown of Gastonia. Besides: she has cousins there she has never met that The Fabulous Feathermaye and I were certain she would have fun with, given the chance…
I knew Atlanta back in the day: Granddaddy and Grandmomma Herndon lived in Decatur’s little Avondale Estates section. Granddaddy would always take me to the big games, usually on weekends when there were double headers in town: The Braves on Friday night, Tech vs. Clemson, or Tech vs. Georgia on Saturday, then the Falcons on Sundays. We went to the very first game the Falcons ever played in Fulton County Stadium. Grandmomma used to walk me down to the corner and we would take the bus down town where she would take us shopping.
It was her first time in a hotel.
Back in the day when we piled in with the family to travel we would just drop into a handy motor lodge along the way—hopefully one with a pool. Hailie was fascinated by the Holiday Inn Select we stayed in, which also adjoins the convention center. The long hallways and all those doors that look exactly alike.
I took her down the hall and showed her how the ice machine works, and would regret it later that week when in another hotel, she walked out the door (at 5:30 am) and let it close behind her. Of course, her grandparents were dead-to-the-world and did not hear the little fists pounding on the door. Not even the dog awoke until the phone rang and the front desk told us they had our crying little granddaughter down at the desk. Turns out I had turned off the bathroom light coming back to bed in the night and she went for the door with a light behind it, ending up in the hall.
Oh, but the cousins! She ran right in amongst them. First she met up with Johnny and Stephanie’s boys, making them show her everything they owned, and driving them nuts with questions about everything. Little Tate followed her around constantly.
When we took her down to my sister Lisa’s, Hailie finally got the chance to meet her girl cousin Chrissy, who is the same age. It was as if they had been waiting their whole lives to see one another. At once they ran off together and we did not see her again until way later that night when Aunt Steph drove them all back to G-town.
We had more fun that I had imagined, and I had imagined it would be tons of good times. Although we only got to spend a sliver of the time we would like to have spent with everyone, we were grateful to see those we did see, even if briefly. Those we missed, we hate to have missed, but we’ll be back soon enough.
Having left our cameras at Steph and Johnny's, we'll have to wait to post more of our vacation pix after we've had them shipped to us.
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