Going South

I am going to be off line for the next five days. Tomorrow, before the sun rises, Ken and I will head the car south to West Virginia. We will stay there one night and pick up my mom the next morning. We are going to a suburb of Washington, D.C. to the house where I lived as a child.

When my mom moved out of the house five years ago she took just the clothes and kitchen items she would need when she moved into a small one-bedroom trailer with her second husband. She returned periodically to the house in Maryland for a few days at a time, to keep a dentist's appointment or tend to the yard or catch up with old friends.

As the years passed the visits grew more infrequent. After her stroke in June 2007 my mom stopped driving that far alone, and she's been to the house just a handful of times in the last year. Earlier this year the house was broken into, and there was evidence that someone had been living there. So she gathered a few more items to take with her, closed and locked the door, and hasn't been back since.

Ken and I are making the trip because the time feels right to see how we can help. In the past, my suggestions to sell the house were met with resistance. It may be that things are different now, and maybe we can be of assistance.

I will have sporadic and brief periods of access to the internet, so I will be off line until I get home next week-end. Please keep an eye on the events of the world for me and hold down the fort until I get back.