nothing but love

Thailand. 

That's where I've been, not that anyone has been worried.  The only person who worries when I haven't blogged is my mother, and she happens to be with me.  WITH ME!  She and my dad came through the door a week ago, red-eyed and pale from their 32-hour journey across the world, and I literally ran to them and wrapped my mom up in my arms and cried.

A year and a half is too long.

We decided to meet-up in Thailand this time, since they've already been to our city, and after you've fumbled with chopsticks and floor toilets and painful digestion once, you've earned the Thai tropics, right?  Especially when you're 63 years old, and as awesome as my folks are.

Not only that, but Zion needed his big-boy passport (the one kids get when they turn five), and we all needed another round of Japanese Encephalitis vaccine, and I was out of shortening.  Thailand was in order for all of us.

So rather than blogging, I've been tossing the football in the sun with my dad.  I've been eating curry and drinking diet coke.  I've been petting elephants and feeding sting rays.  Elephants smell oily, like dreadlocks, by the way, and rays are perhaps the softest thing I've ever touched. 

I got to watch my parents meet my daughter for the first time.  My dad was in love from the get-go, chasing her around for hugs and kisses, to which she was averted at first and now loves.  My mom hung back for a while, letting Jubilee get used to her, like letting a horse sniff her knuckles.  They're pals now, though, and they kind of remind me of one another.  Both are beautiful, sweet, and kind, and both are tougher than most people know.

Other than one CT scan of Zion's head after a nasty fall, and one blue fingernail on my dad's hand from my mom slamming the door on it (accidentally, I can assure you), and one day that my mom felt dizzy and had to rest in her bed to the sounds of the whistling birds and rustling palms, we have had a marvelous time together.  Zion and Grandpa are on a "Grandpa Date" right now, in fact, while the toddlers nap in their prospective perches on borrowed sheets in the breeze.  I think Zion wanted shrimp and Sprite, so it is my understanding that the pair were headed to the The Duke's for an afternoon snack.  Grandpa slipped Zion a 20 baht bill, so Zion could "get the tab," and Zion slipped the bill in his new leather wallet, slipping that into the pocket of his blue cotton shorts.  Thailand is a great place to buy leather cheaply, and Zion is into his new wallet.  In fact yesterday he told Daniel, "I think I'm into wallets now more than sea creatures." 

Zion said to me, today, that he thinks he is in love for the first time.  With a girl named Risa, who he met after breakfast this morning, and who's family are workers like us, 30 miles from South Korea.  I saw them talking by the wooden swing, Zion and Risa, and Risa, who is five, was petting Zion's head like a puppy.  A little TLC goes a long way with Zion, apparently, for he declared, with flushed cheeks, just before lunch, "I think I'm going to marry that girl."

Nothing but love going on here in Thailand.