To Columbus and Back

I got to do something today I haven’t done in I can’t remember when.  I got to spend the afternoon with my brother.

In December, he had back surgery and today he returned to his doctor for another check-up.  I volunteered to drive him to Columbus.  He has been driving for several weeks, but Columbus is almost a hundred miles from here and the return trip might seem like three hundred if he wasn’t feeling up to it.  As it turned out, he drove going and coming and I felt like I really didn’t help out all that much.  I did get to consult the GPS when we missed our turn.  We knew we had gone too far when we crossed the river and saw the big “Welcome to Alabama” sign.  Perhaps we should have gotten the GPS out sooner.

Now, you may not think it was too exciting to ride in the car for several hours just to wait in the doctor’s office for an hour, but I loved it.

You know how it is at holidays, or birthdays, or reunions when the whole family is there.  It is great seeing everybody, but you don’t get to spend any one-on-one time with anybody.  That’s how I’ve been seeing my brother for the past 30 or 40 years.  Always in a crowd of people.  Today, I got to spend about 5 hours with him, just the two of us.  It was great--the highlight of my week.

His back is healing nicely, by the way.  He can resume his golf game in April.  Hurray!