And they're off.

Where have you been? you ask. Well, thanks for asking. It has been awhile. When I clicked "New Post," the iMac of Power hesitated a little--"Contacting www.blogger.com," it said, as if trying to remember what Blogger even was. Have we met, Blogger? You look awfully familiar.

The Scotlands left yesterday afternoon, the dad of the lovely family first, then the mom and two girls. And by "the mom," I mean, of course, my daughter, and by "two girls," my granddaughters. Their leaving doesn't abolish the fun we had. But I keep thinking of that fun in elegiac terms. I am an elegist by nature, I guess. Can't help grieving.

My middle daughter texted me yesterday: "Are you lonely? I sure am." The particular magic of this trip was that all the children--everyone here in Utah, and that's almost everyone, save my son the soccer coach--wanted to be with one another most of the time. It was mayhem and chaos and it was pretty much glorious. There were some quiet mornings, just us and the Scotlands, and a few quiet evenings; there were also more full-family dinners than I can count, some going out to lunches or the movies; some slip-n-sliding, some running through the sprinklers, lots of random imaginative games, story-reading, a few tantrums. A large-scale family hoopla, in other words. The full extravaganza.

I went to sleep last night with sense of a palpable absence--no small girls sleeping in bunkbeds downstairs. And woke up this morning to the same. We'll all get used to it and get back to our routines. For now, this quiet just seems empty. Empty-ish.