The Grahams

 

  I read once about an elderly woman who needed care and had to move across the country to be near her daughter. She was very lonely and her daughter said, “Don’t be sad. You’ll make friends here.” “Yes,” said her mother, “but I don’t have time to make old friends.”

  I’ve known Jim and Ginny Graham since college. Jim and I had an apartment off campus and I was their best man. Jim went off to law school in Texas and I joined the Navy. The Grahams moved to Virginia after Jim got a job at the Justice Department in Washington. I married Teresa and moved to Wannaska. Distance can weaken the ties of friendship, but we were making annual trips to Massachusetts to see my family and the Grahams had bought a summer place also in Massachusetts so Ginny could see her family, so we got together at least once a year.

  We convinced Jim and Ginny to visit us in June, 1997. They flew into Grand Forks and I drove them around town to see the devastation of the recent flood. Teresa's parents loaned us their little camper which we set up for them between the house and the river. We took them around the countryside, introduced them to the locals, and fed them pizza.

  We get to Massachusetts two or three times a year and usually get together with Jim and Ginny, but we haven't been able to convince them to come back to Minnesota.  "It's so nice here (in Mass.) in the summer," they'd use as an excuse. So we changed our tactics. We invited them to come in the winter.

  We extolled the coziness of our guesthouse, the Shêdeau, the beauty of the winter woods, and the exhilaration of a snowshoe around the trails outside the door.  When we visited them in Virginia last fall they seemed to be weakening. Then this January Ginny called to say they were coming. Great! When? "We're coming for your famous St. Patrick's Day party," she said.

   Hmmm. St Patrick's Day is March 17th. That can be problematic if you're looking for winter. I checked the party guestbook. In 2012 it was 70° at party time and we brought out the Patty O'Furniture (sorry). In 2004 there was a blizzard. The party was cancelled due the pandemic in 2021, and last year we did two smaller, more sedate parties over a weekend as we eased back to normalcy. But we told Jim and Ginny to come on up. We would plan on appropriate weather.

  The Grahams had been wintering in Florida since January and arrived in the Twin Cities on the eve of St. Patrick's Day. They looked at flights to Grand Forks, but prices were ridiculous, so they rented a car and headed north. The forecast that day was four inches of snow and strong winds. Not horrible but not nice either.  The roads were snow packed, but empty of traffic, unlike on their home turf.

  We let them relax that first evening, but next morning it was off to the trails. It was their first time on snowshoes for either of them so we took the shorter route to ease them into the sport. I had been asked to do a presentation on Ireland at my old employer Greenbush Manor later that day, and the Grahams came along and provided support for my spiel. The Stenzels kindly attended as well.

  Before coming to Wannaska, Ginny told me they wanted cold weather. She was delighted when the temperature dropped to zero their first night. She didn't complain when it went into the twenties above for our snowshoe treks. The woods were beautiful as advertised, the snow was fluffy, the skies were not cloudy, and the deer played in the distance.

  At the two St. Patrick's Day parties Jim and Ginny met the locals including all of the Wannaskan Almanacers except Mr. Hot Coco. Ginny is a writer herself and asked if she could write a post about their visit. I'll stop here and give her my Friday spot whenever she likes. We appreciate the effort they made to be here and wish them appropriate weather back in Key Biscayne.

Ready for adventure