Matching Tracksuits

When I was a kid, my father went on business trips once or twice a year — South Africa, England, and various states in the US. For me, it was a highlight, because we often got to take him to the airport. Watching planes take off and land from the observation deck was sheer heaven for a small boy. Of course the real highlight came on his return, for he always brought something back for us from wherever he sent. It was a bit like Santa in September.

An acquaintance at church mentioned at the post-Christmas-concert pot-luck that in 2013, he’d been in something like fifty countries on business. That’s a lot of time in a plane, a lot of time away from one’s family, a lot of nights in hotels. I both envy him and pity him. Seeing that much of the world would certainly be a blessing, and it would certainly help one appreciate what’s here in the States and likely produce a sense of the possibilities based on what’s in other countries. Travel changes the traveler forever. Still, so much time away from home, from family, makes it a bad trade.

As a teacher, I don’t get many opportunities to go on business trips. Conferences are about the extent of it. So when I do go for a conference somewhere, I realize anew how much of an aggravation ten countries a year — let alone fifty countries a year — would be. But I also smile at the thought of seeing L’s smile when I say, “Come here, sweetie, I brought something back for you.”

So many changes since the last time we were here. The Girl was younger than the Boy, less than half his age, and the Boy, of course, was not even a thought yet — at least not a thought in our minds.

The house of course hasn’t changed.

It hasn’t changed since before the Civil War, with wrought iron fencing surrounding two magnolias from the same era.

The magnolias certainly haven’t grown as much in the intervening years as the Girl has grown. The last time we were here, with Dziadek, we took the Girl through the house tour in our arms.

Today, it’s the Boy’s turn, only he doesn’t want to go on any quiet tours. He and I head out into the surrounding area, looking for sticks — the Boy’s newest obsession — and pass the time while the girls explore the house.

After the tour, we take some portraits,

L and K dance a bit,

then L finds a tree to climb while the Boy continues looking for sticks.

Six years, many more changes. How different will we all be the next time we visit the plantation?

When you’re with two full-blooded Poles and two half-blooded Poles and you’re near a fort named after a Pole, there’s only one thing to do: visit said fort.

Named for the Polish hero of the American Revolution, Kazimierz Michał Wacław Wiktor Pułaski, the fort named for him represented a turning point in the history of fortifications: it was the first real bombardment of a fort with rifled cannon fire, and compared to the traditional smooth-bore cannon, the new rifled cannon and bullet-shaped shot proved highly effective. The outer wall was breached with cannon fire from positions over a mile away, and the damaged area is still visible due to the different shade of bricks Union soldiers used in repairing the damage.

And still shells remain lodged in the wall.

Of course, none of this was of any interest to either the Boy or the Girl. They were happy just to run about the parade ground, climb on cannons, and investigate large mysterious openings in the fortifications.

We took a walk about the fort, heading out to the Cockspur Island Lighthouse, which has not been in use for over a hundred years — a little bit of history sitting on an oyster- and mussel-shell bed.

Along the way, we saw why: with the river dredged for such huge container ships, a small lighthouse would be a joke today, and as the dredging began before the turn of the century, the lighthouses’ useful days were certainly finite.

Still, none of this was of any interest to the kids. What was of interest, and what we regretted putting off until the very end, was the beach. Cold, windy, yet still irresistible.

A playground next to a cemetery with Revolutionary War era monuments, the monuments worn illegible by centuries of rain and wind, surrounded by live oaks, the playground itself surrounded by magnolias and littered with Spanish Moss, with church bells ringing in the distance — it all seems prototypically southern. E and I spent an hour in such a playground this morning while everyone else was in Mass: the Boy just didn’t want to cooperate, and the lack of a viable way to isolate his fussing (i.e., a crying room) left me with few alternatives. We walked out of the church and within moments found ourselves at a playground beside Colonial Park Cemetery. E climbed and swinged, jumped and slid, and then we went for a short walk along the oyster-shell paved walk of the cemetery.

An ironically unplanned place for E and me to start our second day in Savannah for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that our first site to see was Bonaventure Cemetery, the largest graveyard in the area and likely one of the largest in the south, famous from its staring role in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The plan was simple: the Boy could sleep, and indeed he drifted off as we drove there, and we would have a chance for a pleasant walk in a lovely cemetery.

Cemeteries always hold surprises, and Bonaventure didn’t disappoint in that regard given the number of Jewish graves with Jewish and even Cyrillic inscriptions. L and I walked about with Babcia, commenting on the typically Jewish surnames we were discovering (Singer, Rosenberg, Goldstein, Cohn) and the tragic-comic nature of so much Jewish literature.

The sunlight filtering through the Spanish Moss hanging on the countless Live Oaks cast a soft hue on everything and made it a perfect place to sit and perhaps read a book or chat about things of real importance, but we had a schedule and, once he woke, a hungry boy, so after Babcia and K triangulated and positioned themselves (it was imperative that Babcia call and ask her now-famous question, “Gdzie jestescie?”), we headed to the historic district for lunch and a walk.

The former was a disaster at the over-price, over-rated Shrimp Factory that seemed to have irony on the menu (my jambalaya had microscopic shrimp that were few and far between) and slow service as the soup of the day. The latter was what could be expected in the most charming little city in the South. A riverside walk, wandering through streetside cafes (why didn’t we eat in one of them?) with various buskers and plastic sculptures (what an odd combination, but there they were, opposite each other), and ice cream shops open in mid-January all soon put us in better spirits. What’s not to love about Savannah, after all? It’s the perfect tourist destination: small, wrapped in history, dotted with countless squares — and high real estate with no jobs for anyone, Babcia and K would add. Perhaps that’s how the locals keep the average tourist from thinking the inevitable: what if we could move here?

As the sun cast increasingly longer shadows and the chill returned to the air, we realized we were back near the church where we’d begun our day. K and Babcia took the kids to the playground where E and I started the day and I headed back to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, a church that actually looks, sounds, and feels like a church, with mult-level vaulted ceilings, sculptures of saints, stained glass, an enormous organ, and an echo.

I headed back to the others, played with the kids a bit, and returned to the cemetery, this time with a camera, the sun once again filtering through the Spanish Moss but this time from the opposite direction.