Grasshopper No.5 reluctantly invited her Mother and Dad to visit last weekend. It is a "duty" that every single, independent daughter dreads. My parents are coming to town! What do I do with them?
Actually we found lots of things to do and the weather was incredible. No.5 was a gracious host.
No.5 doesn't talk about her personal life much but she did have a medical procedure to remove a suspicious looking mole from her side over her rib cage two weeks ago. There were internal stitches that dissolve over time and then surface (skin) stitches. The stitches were pretty blue color. She down plays the significance of the procedure but it unscores the significance of getting moles checked on a regular basis.
We always stay at a cheap hotel in downtown Minneapolis. It is on the edge of the Nickolett Mall that graces downtown. By walking from the hotel, every store you could want is within 3-4 blocks. It is very busy during the week as workers commute to downtown and shop in their spare time or after work. Weekends, the Nickolette Mall is like a ghost town. Stores are open but it is very quiet. It is like having your own personal shopping center.
I always liked early mornings growing up as a kid in downtown Plymouth. It was quiet. Occasionally a water truck washing the streets would cool off a warm morning but their was serenity. My mother would send us down the block to Muellers Bakery for sweetrolls (long johns, crescent rolls, mudpies and some hardrolls) for breakfast. They were always fresh and we didn't know that sugar was bad for us. So in the early mornings, Plymouth's downtown concrete streets belonged to me filled with smells of fresh bakery.
Fast forward to Minneapolis. If you get up real early in the morning and venture from the hotel you will find that it is a cavern of concrete with very few people. There are a few "shady" looking characters requesting "spare change" and a few dedicated joggers. It took me back to my childhood Plymouth mornings. One block from the hotel is a Caribou Coffee shop. It had expensive coffee but guess what? It had fresh sweetrolls. So the devil made me buy a couple of sweetrolls. For the morning, I just didn't care if it was bad for me. It was like 50 years ago. And there were the bakery smells. Oh, the smells.
The lesson is Grasshoppers is that sometimes you can go back in time if only in your mind. For a short hour or so, I was a teenager reliving my childhood. Happiness is a sweet roll!
Love,
Dad
I remember Sunday mornings going with my Dad to get the paper and fresh sweet rolls in Sheboygan. Times have changed though because there is no bakery open on Sunday morning anymore and picking up sweet rolls from Piggly Wiggly just doesn't cut it.