YOLO
It seemed more than coincidental that the first story on today’s New York Times The Morning is an article on the universally prevalent thought process involved in people’s ongoing wrestling match with time and how to use this, their most precious resource. They mentioned the term YOLO in that article and I have to admit that I had to look it up. You Only Live Once is yet another version of my favorite tag line, Carpe Diem, which I have always liked both in sentiment (seize the day) and in its use of Latin, the ancient and mostly dead language that I bothered to learn reasonably well during my classical education in high school…in none other than the center of Latin, Rome. In any case and with whatever referential term you prefer to voice it, the sentiment that time is fleeting and we must make our best use of it every day remains, is perhaps the most powerful commentary of human existence.
This jumps pout at me this morning because I have just returned home after a day of traveling back to our hilltop from what I must declare is the lovely springtime state of Tennessee. Ive never thought much about Tennessee before and our ride from Dollywood to the McGhee Tyson Airport that serves the greater Knoxville area, reminded me of just how beautiful the various corners of our country can be. That route took us through the fringes of the Smokey Mountains, a place we have mostly all heard of through songs played on banjos, but which in springtime is as lovely as any place I have ever seen. I grant you that green wooded areas are only one form of landscape beauty, but I bet few people don’t feel the primordial tug of such a verdant place on a sunny spring day.
I took that ride in a rented minivan which served our purposes well for the trip that started in Nashville and took us into Mississippi to Tupelo, up through Alabama into Chattanooga, and ended at the base of the great Smokey Mountains at Dollywood, just southeast of Knoxville. Kim and I were with my. Daughter Carolyn and her two daughters Charlotte and Evelyn. This was their spring break trip, which their father, John, could not make because he is settling into his new job and couldn’t afford the time off at that moment. In thrashing about several months ago for a place to meet up with the girls, I hit on my long dated yearning to ride the Natchez Trace. That trip always comes to mind as a gap in my travels that I need to fill and yet one that always gets set aside for the urgency of some other trip. That caused me to suggest a visit to this region and while it morphed from a trip all the way down the Trace, it did start in Nashville and I did manage to get in the top half of the Trace and allow me to buy the Trace pin that now adorns my travel bag. That was enough to fulfill my dream of the trip and we spent the rest of the time fulfilling th dreams of my daughter and granddaughters, which runs less towards the Trace and its antiquity and more towards trying out Buc-ee’s roadside rest stop and spending two days in the family-friendly Dollywood grasp.
Our flight back to San Diego (via Atlanta) left McGhee Tyson two hours after the flight to LaGuardia that the girls needed to take. That served us all well because it allowed us to all sit together at their date and wallow in the opportunity we had had in spending precious time with our precious girls. Sitting at that airport gate was truly my YOLO moment. We had been able to spend an entire week seeing things none of us had seen before. Some played to Kim’s musical heart (especially Nashville, but also over the rest of the journey), it played to my historical bent on experiencing traveling down the Natchez Trace, and it played, most importantly, into the pleasures of youth in eating rich southern foods (Pancake Pantry, Martin’s BBQ, Loveless Cafe, Johnny’s Drive-In, Buc-ee’s, and the Dollywood Stampede), stopping to buy souvenirs everywhere they were sold, going to a candy factory like the GooGoo Cluster refectory, watching the girls ride the rides and experience a new part of the world. We both thoroughly enjoyed their innocent pleasures and loving embrace of life at every turn. There were no traumas and no hissy fits, it was all about enjoying the ride. We had nowhere we had to be and yet we chose to go everywhere the trip offered. We rode a cable car up into the Smokey Mountains, watched bears and otters frolicking in the wild animal park, had an exciting encounter with other wild animals (ostriches, bison, llamas, giraffes and zebras) at the Tupelo Safari Park, and watched a Wild West show at the Stampede.
And then, at the gate, we got to hug and kiss both Charlotte and Evelyn and then wave them off onto their flight home as they went down the jetway. We will see them all in two months in Virginia Beach, where all our kids are gathering for a weekend to celebrate my son Roger’s birthday, and then we will spend the whole month of July with them here on the hilltop, culminating with another roadtrip, this time to Denver to see the new home of my other son, Thomas. In other words, we are not lacking for taking the opportunity to see and enjoy our granddaughters these days. They are at an age when they have no place they would rather be and we are at an age to appreciate that these are the most precious days of our lives and we are grateful to have the opportunity to enjoy these wonderful moments of their youth with them. It is all very life affirming in the grandest way. We are literally seizing the day and doing it as much as we possibly can. It was not a cheap trip, less because we were extravagant, but because family fun comes at a steeper and steeper price these days. I ran through $1,000 in entry ticket prices on most days, just to see normal middle-America attractions to fill our days with wonder. But it was perhaps as good money as I have ever spent. No fancy beach resort, no high-end spa day, no expensive concert tickets and no ritzy European hotel or luxury cruise was worth more than spending time with these girls.
I know I speak for Kim as well that money spent on good times with family is becoming more and more valuable the older we get. We have fun trips with friends and enjoy occasional luxuries and fine dining at times, but none of that gets a higher soul-enriching score than a day at a theme park with the granddaughters. I spent over $100 on my ticket to Dollywood and all that got me, since I didn’t ride one ride, was bench time in the central square and the right to overpay for a mediocre lunch. And yet, I would not trade that day at Dollywood, playing the role of the dutiful bench-sitting grandfather to my lovely granddaughters for all the tea in China, as they say. Why was that, you ask? Well, in the words that speak loudest to us all sooner or later, you only live once.