The Last Days

This semester, this period of time spent at school with Stephanie and our friends, competing in regattas, visiting with my fiancée's family, and overall being away from my "original" home is nearly over. We just finished watching The Christmas Gift, an older movie with John Denver in it (the Castos are big John Denver and Andy Griffith fans), and now we are peacefully on the sofa, enjoying the company and enjoying the quiet. Last year at this time, I was already home--I boarded a plane early Saturday morning, bound eventually for Martinsburg, Pennsylvania.
Stephanie and I had departed from school much later than planned, and since it was my first time driving to her house, I took us the wrong way around Birmingham en route to I-65. We eventually made it to her house, but I only saw it by night, and even that for just a few hours as we arrived around 10 and I left before five o'clock the next morning! I briefly met part of her extended family, and after staying up and socializing for a bit, we all hit the sack for some rest before Stephanie drove me to the Huntsville airport early the following day. It was a hard parting, because we were at that point where we were very close, but not quite sure of what the other one thought and felt. Also, it was the end of our first week of finals in college, it had been a harried drive on the way to her house, and the drive to the airport was just as bad with a heavy blanket of fog obscuring landmarks and making everything rather disorienting. All that, plus I was going to give her money to get out of the parking deck we had pulled the car into, but I forgot until I was in the security check line; she came running back, quite distraught, and it caught me off guard as I realized my mistake and quickly began processing how I was going to get the money to her without leaving the line and causing problems. The friendly individuals in line behind me were gracious enough to pass the dollar back to her, and we waved a sad goodbye as I continued through security and she went back to her car, her home, and her family for Clark Family Christmas.
This year, however, I am driving home, and so we drove two cars back. We still got stuck in some traffic, quite like last year, but it was not nearly so bad. I followed her until we got into the thick of things, and then we pulled off to check alternate routes. Providentially, though, the road began clearing almost as soon as we left it! You would have thought we were the ones causing the hold up... Anyway, dissatisfied with the alternative road, and seeing that traffic was letting up, we returned to the interstate, this time with me in the lead, and I led all the way to her road, where I deferred the first arrival to her, and she passed me up. But instead of catching a few hours of sleep and running off early in the morning, I was a part of Clark Family Christmas, adding my own surname and first two initials to the "Tr. Clark" confusion in the house.
It has been a wonderful and memorable visit and stay. In fact, four nights in a row is the longest consecutive period of time I have spent at this house--and all within just a year of my whirlwind first visit. Is it not interesting to see how much can change in what seems to be so short a time?