A Whirlwind Visit

At the end of June, we had a visit with David’s daughter Allie, who lives in Austin, TX. Quite the whirlwind! On our first full day together, we toured the Sistine Chapel:

Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment”

Then we stopped by the Oval Office …

… followed The Yellow Brick Road …

… and wound up hearing Celts in Holland!

Strange times, indeed! The next day we climbed a mountain …

… and saw a shark:

If this all seems like too much for one long weekend, here’s how we did it. 🙂

A few hours before Allie’s flight was due in Kalamazoo, I asked David, “What city does she fly through?”

“Detroit.”

“Oh, good,” I said, “Then we can pick her up if her flight to Kalamazoo gets cancelled.” A half hour later, Allie called to say that her flight had, indeed, been cancelled. The last one of the day was already overbooked, and she couldn’t find a rental car or take the bus.

Without skipping a beat, David said, “No problem, we’ll pick you up.” We explained how we’d already discussed this possibility. Unbeknownst to David, earlier that morning I had a dream in which he and I had attended a Smiths concert together, and this formed “one of our favorite memories.” The Smiths broke up long before we ever met, but once David hung up the phone with Allie, he said, “Since we’re going on a little road trip, we can finally listen to this Smiths mix I got from the library.” We ended up having our own private Smiths concert just hours after my dream.

The whole day unfolded in a synchronous, divinely orchestrated way. Actually, the entire visit did. Our first day plans changed due to driving to Detroit and Allie needing to reschedule her return trip, but our second day went according to David’s itinerary. We saw “Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition” at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum in Grand Rapids:

If this exhibition travels near you, I highly recommend it: “a life-size, up close, never before seen perspective.” Here’s David pondering the “Separation of Light from Darkness.”

I forgot until we walked through the images, but after my 1998 TBI, I spent six months drawing all the Prophets and Sybils in blue crayon. I found it therapeutic as previously sporadic prophetic dreams avalanched through my life on a nightly basis. In the early stages of TBI recovery, I could not slow down the influx of information about people’s health conditions and world events. I also felt myself undergoing an uncontrollable and spontaneous initiation. Copying images of others who experienced such things calmed my anxiety until I got used to a new way of living. To see these Prophets and Sybils seemed full circle. A kind of homecoming.

This felt especially true since my dreams continued to preview events I didn’t know David had planned.

We finished viewing the Sistine Chapel frescoes, as well as an entertaining and informative video that featured the same voice narrator of that morning’s dream. David and I expected to leave, but Allie wanted to tour the rest of the museum. That’s how we found ourselves at a replica of the Oval Office. We also learned a lot about President Ford, his wife Betty, Watergate and other challenges of his presidency. It felt eerie to read all this history the day after the reversal of Roe vs. Wade.

In fact, my déjà vu at the Presidential Museum led me to research US Chiron placement at the time Watergate began. Chiron is in the very same degree right now, within orb of the US natal Chiron. This 50-year cycle connects both periods of extremely polarized politics and culture. I referred to this echo in my post about the upcoming Full Moon in Capricorn. I might not have noticed the Chiron Return of Watergate if we had skipped the rest of the museum, so you have Allie to thank for some of those insights.

After a late lunch in Grand Rapids, we headed to Holland, Michigan and stopped at a new Wizard of Oz landscape and sculpture exhibit in Centennial Park.

I had no idea this was on the agenda, and it echoed a dream from that morning, which conflated David and the Scarecrow.

He insisted on taking my photo with Dorothy in honor of my TBI recovery book, “If I Only Had a Brain Injury.” (This book is out of print and often crazy expensive on Amazon, but I have a stash of copies. Please contact me if you’d like a signed paperback at reasonable cost.)

Allie bonded with the Lion:

Somehow we managed to escape spooky trees and flying monkeys …

… but it was close! Almost as close as that shark in Lake Michigan:

(It’s actually driftwood.)

We climbed a mountain of sand, also known as a dune. Here’s the opposite view from the earlier photo I shared:

You can’t see the major drop off in this photo, but it was a lot steeper than it looks. Sand is slippery underfoot, so it felt like climbing two or three times that distance. Even runner Allie got tired.

We attended the first ever Celtic Festival in Holland, Michigan, and it seemed appropriate for all three of us. David’s half Dutch (his dad grew up in Amsterdam), and Allie is 3/4 Dutch. Both her grandparents on the other side grew up in the Netherlands. I’m a mix of Irish, Scottish, English, Viking, and Eastern European. I grew up with the much larger “Celtic Classic” festival in Bethlehem, PA. Also a little known fact: my high school had a bagpipe corps.

Amidst our adventures, we ate lots of delicious food — both out and from the garden. We’ve looked forward to Allie’s visit for months. David set it as a deadline for certain yard and house projects, and the three of us always have a lovely time together. Lots of deep discussions, plus fun, food, and culture. Allie and I have 19 years between us, which makes our Capricorn North Nodes only three degrees apart. I also discovered that her and my progressed Moons are only one degree apart — both in Scorpio right now, getting ready for a late September shift to Sagittarius. I knew we connected, but it was wild to see such precise astro alignments validating our shared experiences.

Before taking her back to the Detroit Airport, we went to the D Avenue trailhead for the Kalamazoo River Valley Trail — a walk David and I often enjoy. It was, indeed, a whirlwind visit, even though we stayed in Michigan. I promised them I’d write up a blog and photo recap, so here it is. We feel so grateful for such a loving and special time.