My (and now our) nephew Paul visited us for a few days. I had not seen him since 2006, and that was at Emily's wedding.....at which I was a little preoccupied.
Before that it had been hit or miss. As a child, though, I spent a lot of time with him and knew him well. So this visit was extra special for that reason.
Paul has just retired as a police lieutenant in San Jose. So, of course, he and Vicky had hours of interesting discussions, with me learning an awful lot.
I have been voraciously reading articles in the New York Times and Washington Post and Fox News about policing, but have found all of those articles to be political, but not insightful. I have been wanting articles told from the point of view of the police. And articles talking about what policing is really like and what it does to people (for example, Paul talked a lot this visit about the cumulative effect of seeing so many dead bodies in his career...that kind of thing).
In addition to visiting and catching up we did a lot together while he was here We took long walks around Leisure World, a hike in the desert, and one morning he got up very early to take a 32-mile bike ride with us.
We took a walk to mom and dad's home:
Paul got a video of us while we were all cycling in the dark.
After a terrific visit, he left to backpack on the Arizona Trail---a trail we are quite familiar with.
It won't be another 17 years until we see him again. None of us will let that happen. That's the terrific thing about family, isn't it?
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