A Meaningful Vacation
I didn’t think of it as a vacation, just a quick trip to Kansas City for a grandchild’s senior recital at the University of Missouri there. However, due to a large snowstorm in Denver the trip was prolonged and also took me to Mid-Missouri, into the heart of my family.
When I arrived at KCI that late afternoon, I headed directly to the Starbucks Coffee craving a cup. Waiting there were my ex-wife Myrna and a grandson Genaro. I got my fix and away we went to a nearby motel. We ate a light supper and then played cards.
In the morning Myrna told me she had been ill all night. When she felt up to it, we drove into Kansas to visit my youngest sister whom I had not seen for several years. Her husband had been extremely ill but was making a fine recovery although he was experiencing lingering effects. We had nice conversations and good food at their home. Back at the hotel Genaro and I went to the lobby for a light supper of chicken and noodles. Myrna asked us to bring her some if it was brothy. We enjoyed eating and did return with some food for Myrna who really enjoyed sipping at it. Again we played cards, a simple game called Cabin Fever, the game that has a strategy but not one that overpowers to the point one cannot have fun playing it. The conversations continued. I even won a game.
The next morning we shopped at the Country Club Plaza and then moved into the Westin Hotel at the Crown Center in downtown Kansas City, MO. There my daughter (Genaro’s mom) and three more of her children joined us. The kids stayed in the rooms watching TV while Myrna, Desma, and I roamed the Crown Center shopping area. In the late afternoon we went to Loose Park near the Plaza to join more of our family and friends at a picnic. The conversations there were very interesting, conversations with in-laws, college-attending grandchildren and their friends (a biologist, a musician, a Mexican American business major, a Viet Namese pre-med student, a culinary arts student in her internship, and a dancer). Then we drove to the old church where the ballet—the main reason for gathering in Kansas City—would be performed. We attended a pre-reception of snacks, cookies, and soft and hard drinks, met new folk, saw other friends of the family who had come for the event, and heard a live jazz combo. I really enjoyed listening and watching my very animated grandson Kalo play the stand up bass.
Then the main event of the evening, the performance of the ballet “To Some Transparent End,” a stage performance conceived by Kalo and his best friend Abbie, scored by Kalo, choreographed by Abbie—both students at the Kansas City Music and Dance Conservatory at UMKC. The work was a 35-minute program with eleven dancers, three singers, and six instruments. The setting was a city bus with riders coming and going and doing things people do while riding through the city. I watched with keen interest since I have been a bus rider for the past seventeen years. I recognized familiar bus characters with their body movements and attitudes, their appropriate and inappropriate actions. Of course there were no words except the Latin texts the singers provided, all related to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, chapter four, the familiar “To everything there is a season.” Abbie told me that one requirement for the dancers was to take at least three rides on a city bus. The characters they observed and interpreted were crazy, thoughtful, high, confused, pointless, depressed, aggressive, intimidating, wooing, sexual, shy, freaked out…all these things recognizable in the action of the dance; even the surprising death at the very end of the show. I had seen all these things on Denver buses.
The applause was enthusiastic from the crowd of around 125 people. My grandson couldn’t hold back his smile although unlike the dancer Abbie he seemed not to know what to do with his hands. The two were happy. A music professor told my son Michael that Kalo and Abbie had really raised the bar for subsequent senior recitals at the Conservatory.
I was scheduled to leave the next day, but due to the snow my flight was cancelled. That’s why I ended up in Mid-MO for a few more days. There I played the part of pater familias, something I am supposed to enjoy but which never has attracted me. Oh well, we do what we have to do. I put up with it and did a good job. There was more music at a Jefferson City bar called The Mission. My eldest grandson, Evan, opened their Saturday evening RAP Fest with the National Anthem. He sang unaccompanied, ornamenting the melody as if he were on “The Voice.” The largely African American audience stood up as the song began and uttered sounds of approval at his improvisations. Then he sang a duet with a huge black man, Evan singing a nice melody and the other man rapping. The two of them had composed the quite affecting piece, “We’re All American.” Then I heard a lot more RAP. We left when two tall young men came in. My grandson recognized them as people he had arrested the month before in a neighboring town where he works on the police force. We left right away. On the way out of the bar though, I was hugged by three very large black men who just love my grandson.
While in Jefferson City I got to hang out with my daughter Desma, play lots more cards with grandkids, eat interesting meals with my ex-wife Myrna, and hear way too much noise. I started missing the very quiet people I live with in Denver.
For me, rich meanings arose from from the blending of generations, music, responsibility, love, and other complications, all things I could enjoy on my prolonged vacation in Missouri due to a turn in the weather and the luxury of my current retired status.
© 25 April 2016
