Which is stranger?
Meeting people whose names you recognise but whose faces you have never seen and discovering that they fit the mental image you have held for many years ...
OR
... meeting someone whom you knew as a ten-year-old and discovering that they're now married with grown children and perhaps even a grandparent?
DH and I experienced both this past weekend when we took his mother to the 125th Anniversary of the church that he had attended us a young boy (and later as a young man).
It was perhaps easier for me to get my head around the fact that this elegant woman I was meeting had once been my husband's Sunday School friend than it was for him, or that the elderly woman with teenage grandsons had been taught Sunday School by my mother-in-law (who didn't seem to have any difficulty recognising people from the distant past). In many ways, the weekend had a surreal quality to it.
Apart from eating (every function had an abundance of wonderful food), talking, and meeting old friends, we were also able to find time to do some shopping. I bought presents for two adorable granddaughters having birthdays next month and regretfully put a skirt back on the rack when I saw its price. (No, not regretfully. I mean, who pays $600 for a skirt?)
DH was also able to briefly visit childhood haunts and view the house that he had lived in as a child and to which his father had added rooms. And it is still unchanged despite the passage of some forty odd years.
I do have one bone to pick with DH though. To hear him and his family talk, you would think that his hometown is the New Zealand equivalent of the Mediterranean or Australia's Gold Coast. All I can say is that the Gold Coast at least (having never been to the Mediterranean) never ever gets this cold. And there was a very good reason for why we were so cold. Snow. Freezing cold air blowing straight off the ranges (you can just see it in the last picture).
I'm just glad I threw in my wool coat at the last minute.
I'm also very glad to be home again.
Meeting people whose names you recognise but whose faces you have never seen and discovering that they fit the mental image you have held for many years ...
OR
... meeting someone whom you knew as a ten-year-old and discovering that they're now married with grown children and perhaps even a grandparent?
DH and I experienced both this past weekend when we took his mother to the 125th Anniversary of the church that he had attended us a young boy (and later as a young man).
It was perhaps easier for me to get my head around the fact that this elegant woman I was meeting had once been my husband's Sunday School friend than it was for him, or that the elderly woman with teenage grandsons had been taught Sunday School by my mother-in-law (who didn't seem to have any difficulty recognising people from the distant past). In many ways, the weekend had a surreal quality to it.
Apart from eating (every function had an abundance of wonderful food), talking, and meeting old friends, we were also able to find time to do some shopping. I bought presents for two adorable granddaughters having birthdays next month and regretfully put a skirt back on the rack when I saw its price. (No, not regretfully. I mean, who pays $600 for a skirt?)
DH was also able to briefly visit childhood haunts and view the house that he had lived in as a child and to which his father had added rooms. And it is still unchanged despite the passage of some forty odd years.
I do have one bone to pick with DH though. To hear him and his family talk, you would think that his hometown is the New Zealand equivalent of the Mediterranean or Australia's Gold Coast. All I can say is that the Gold Coast at least (having never been to the Mediterranean) never ever gets this cold. And there was a very good reason for why we were so cold. Snow. Freezing cold air blowing straight off the ranges (you can just see it in the last picture).
I'm just glad I threw in my wool coat at the last minute.
I'm also very glad to be home again.
Comments
Oh, and the photos are wonderful! You husband's hometown looks so picturesque :) Pity about the cold. As a child of the Mediterranean, I have to say that here snow can happen once in a decade or so, but it's not supposed to ;)