Liftoff

Travelled last week; it was mind-opening as usual. Watched a zillion sitcoms on my personal TV screen aboard Jet Blue, reveled in the big wide seats, gobbled not one but two boxes of Animal Crackers.I love Animal Crackers. I love all little things: dogs made by the Beanie Baby crowd, mini-marshmallows, Paul Simon...I bought the $8 headphone-and-nap-set just to get my hands on that little pillow. If I kept dolls I could totally use it in my doll house.I was visiting my big sister Nan on this trip. (She's the cute one pulling at her shorts in this picture.) Nan didn't approve of dolls. We never played with them as kids. Oh the odd grownup would sometimes give us one but we just kind of dismantled it for parts after we’d used it as the Baby Jesus in our annual Nativity tableau. (Ah those were great events! Nan took the two rocking chairs from our great aunts’rooms and tipped them over so the tops of their backs met in a perfect roof shape. Then she played the Virgin Mary in gossamer veils of blue, while I was Joseph in our grandfather’s old brown shirt. (Well I was Joseph if you can possibly recognize Joseph in a person less than three feet tall with hair like Don King's. (Does it even need saying that I’m the one on the bottom at the right?)Instead of liking dolls we liked stuffed animals, far more noble creatures in our minds. I had a stuffed dog named Pinky who got less and less pink over the years and Nan had a bear named Jinglefoot with a bell sewn into his lower paw.When I was visiting her in Florida this past week, we wandered into her closet so she could lend me a purse more decent then the old black feedbag of a thing I normally carry. I stood there marveling at all the closet space people get in new houses and that’s when she spoke up:“See that thing on the top shelf? Do you recognize it?”She reached up then – Nan is tall – and pulled down Jinglefoot himself, carefully saved all this time. So yes travel takes you to other places, yes. But if you're really lucky and you keep your eyes peeled, it will take you to other times as well.