Roots

Well ... there's a deep subject, no?

It's Tuesday afternoon and the son and daughter in law have left Sewanee, TN for Texas this afternoon. The wife is on the road back from Dallas after spending the night before a Doctor's appointment early this morning. The daughter is due to fly out of DFW this evening back to NOLA and my truck (no, I'm not in it) is due back from San Antonio sometime this evening. On Thursday after kenneling at least some of the four legged family we will be on the road to NOLA to see the daughter graduate Tulane. As an aside, we are supposed to have tickets to hear "Fats" play at Tipitina's on Saturday night - more to follow on that later.

I'm amazed at how transient our population has become. Hadn't considered it until sometime yesterday when I got to thinking about the miles we all will have traveled this week. Daughter - 1200 miles (Sunday flew into Dallas to take some photo's and as she was already there she drove down to visit her Mom on Mother's Day). Son & daughter in law - 1000 miles (they are moving to Houston for his schooling). Wife - just 200 miles to her credit (the Doctor's visit). And my truck - 400 miles (both ways). From here to NOLA it's 500 miles one way so the wife and I will log another 1000 total by Sunday's return. That comes up to 3800 miles for 4 people and one lonely pickup in a week's time and it seems to me a lot. I will grant that this situation is neither normal or ordinary but it begs the greater question: Do we still have roots and if so, how deep are they? I'm not sure I know.

I fear that society in general is becoming "throw away", much the same as a lot of the goods we purchase today that aren't made to last. It's become to easy to pack up and move on down the road, to travel here and there as the mood strikes.

A sense of home is very strong in me. I've lately been going thru some old family picture albums and am in awe and envy of the community they demonstrate. I posted a reply to a blog I read just this morning dealing with the quantum change my Granddaddy witnessed in his 73 years from 1899 to 1973. He was smart, well read, accomplished and relatively well to do but everyone in a large family stayed pretty close together and certainly didn't experience the type of travel I've just described. You know, it's easy to get from here to there today, and the opportunities we're presented are much greater than years back but bigger's not always better and I can truthfully say I think I'd prefer to be back in the day of those photos, warts and all.