Our check out time at the rental in San Antonio was 11 a.m. We had a 2 1/2 hour drive to our next VRBO on Padre Island where we couldn't check in until 4 p.m. Needless to say, we didn't hurry to leave this glorious guesthouse. By the time we left, I had totally forgotten that I wanted to drive past the Alamo. We stopped for a leisurely late breakfast. We shopped for shoes at DSW in Corpus Christi. Not a hotspot tourist destination, I know. However, a pair of shoes I brought on this trip broke in Austin and I was hoping I could replace them. Alas, they didn't have what I needed.
We got to our place at 3 p.m. Since we were an hour early we drove to the beach access right next to our place. You can drive your car right on to the beach and park, so we did. Gayle got out immediately to do one of her favorite things, walk along a beach hunched over looking for shells. Gayle had done research and learned that she was allowed to fill up a 5 gallon bucket of shells on Padre Island National Seashore. She wanted to get started on her 5 gallon of shells.
It was bitterly cold. The weather app said it would be very windy, with a high of 53 degrees. We were parked beside a jetty so I decided to take an invigorating and chilly walk to the end and back.
The end of the jetty was wet and slippery as the waves crashed over the rocks.
Dolphins swam by, and I was glad to be alive and traveling with my sister.
By then it was time to check in. We have a two bedroom, two bath rental, with a nice long balcony that has a partial view of the beach. It is pretty perfect except that it smells "funny". Gayle and I kept trying to define the smell. So far we can't figure out what it smells like. All we know is we don't like it.
We basically threw our suitcases in our rooms and headed out. We have planned to see our Uncle Stanley tonight. He is our mother's oldest brother. He is 95 years old and lives an hour from Padre Island. The idea for this whole trip to Texas originated because we wanted to visit our Uncle Stanley while we still around to visit.
He lives alone in the home he shared with his wife and her best friend. They are both gone now. He gets by with help from his neighbors and the love of people he has nurtured over the years. He taught sociology at Texas A&M Kingsville for several decades and has many friends and former colleagues nearby. I ran out to a nearby restaurant and brought food back for dinner. For many, many years Stanley took groups to Mexico to visit archaeological sites and experience the wonders of the country to our South. Gayle went with him twice and my dad went once. It was delightful to see Gayle and Stanley catch up with each other.
I had brought along several things to share with my Uncle Stanley. I am working on scanning family photos from my mother's photo albums. There are several photos of my grandparent's families and my great grandparent's families, plus photos that go back even further. My mother didn't identify the photos and I wanted his help. Here are three of my favorite ones:
My grandmother's Pennsylvania Dutch family. She is the one on the far left.
My grandfather's family from the hills of West Virginia. He is the one holding the drum on the far right.
This is a photo of my mother and her brother, Stanley, when they lived in Nigeria. They are each holding one of my grandfather's hunting rifles. It intrigues me to see these two children raised by staunch pacifist parents being allowed to handle guns at such tender ages.
I could identify almost everyone in the photos above but ones like the following photo (which cracks me up every time I look at) needs some context. Did I come from these women???
Stanley was able to identify all the people in the photos of his parents' families of origin but he was at a loss when we went further back in the family tree. I was grateful for those he could identify.
I also had a gift for him and a story to tell him. A couple months ago I got an email from a woman I did not know. She said her mother (who is 95 years old) is dealing with memory loss. She is helping her mother by going through boxes of things she has saved. In the boxes she found a small notebook that says on it: Poems my father, Playford Bittinger, wrote while he was living and written down in this notebook by me, his daughter, Roberta Bittinger. The woman who sent me the email said that her mother is no relation to the Bittinger family and can't remember how this book came to be in her possession. The daughter decided she wanted to return the book to Playford Bittinger's family. How many Playfords can there be out there, anyway? One of the poems was written for the engagement party of Desmond Bittinger to Irene Frantz. She began a Google search. She learned that Playford had died in the 1930s. Desmond and Irene were both gone. But she found that Desmond and Irene had a daughter Pattie and her obit was online. I was listed as Pattie's daughter and pastor of the La Verne Church of the Brethren. She called the church. They told her I was retired but gave her my email address. She wrote to ask me if I would like the book of poems. Absolutely! But I did wonder how it came to be in her mother's possession. She said she didn't know and her mother couldn't remember but in her research she had learned that her mother and my Uncle Stanley's family had both been doing Volunteer service in Castaner, Puerto Rico at the same time. She said her mother had a painful family history and often latched on to other family's stories and things. I would love to know the journey of this little notebook but, more importantly, I am just glad it made its journey to me. The last poem in the book was written by my grandfather Desmond in honor of his brother Playford, following Playford's death. I made a copy of the little notebook and gave it to my Uncle Stanley.
Every evening my Uncle Stanley gets on Google Meets with his son and grandson from Australia, a colleague from Kingsville, his wife's nieces and nephew from Indiana, his wife's best friend's children (one from Texas and one from Hollywood) and his brother from Oregon. We joined our Uncle Stanley in his office for a chance to talk with this good group of people on Google Meets. They have been meeting every night for the last two years. They started this nightly tradition in order to stay connected to Uncle Stanley. It was a lovely group of people. Several of them gave testimonies to how important Stanley had been to their lives and well-beings. We joined the group for a little over a half hour but by then we were nearly roasted. Our uncle keeps his home heated to 90 degrees. You can see that on the digital temperature gauge at the bottom of the photo below.
We had been there for almost 4 hours by then and our faces were red hot and sweat was dripping from our noses. I had my uncle on one side of me and the floor heater on the other side. I truly thought I might pass out. We bid them all farewell and rushed outside to the bracingly cold air. I kept the car window open for much of the hour drive home.
Back in our rental by the beach, it took us a couple hours to settle down and fall asleep.
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