Susie

In 2005 my sister Diane, her husband Harold and I took a trip to the United Kingdom. Wow! What a trip that was.

On the flight over, we all had video screens that were on the backs of the seats in front of us. There was one screen we could go to that was a map of the part of the world we were traveling in. It showed a little airplane that was in the exact place on the map where we actually were. It was sort of like watching ourselves flying.

When we landed in London we very quickly fell in love with it and everything about it. Even though it is a huge city, it was very quaint. A lot of the streets were extremely narrow. They only had three lanes. The two outside lanes were used for parking, which only left one lane for driving. Believe it or not, it was two-way traffic. As two cars would meet face to face, one would pull over into an empty parking space in one of the outside lanes. The other car would pass and then the parked car would pull back into the center lane and both cars would continue on their way. It worked very well for the Londoners. They knew exactly what they were doing, and no one got excited about it.

We stayed in London for two days before heading to Scotland on the third day. While walking around town on the second day, we found ourselves in front of Buckingham Palace. It is very impressive, although it doesn’t have any lawn in front. There is just a large expanse of blacktop behind a magnificent fence and gates. Just across the street from the front of the palace is a beautiful park that goes downhill to a pond. After walking around in the park for a while we came back to a hotdog stand that was just at the bottom of the hill from the palace.

While sitting on the lawn eating our hotdogs and drinking sodas, we heard bagpipes start playing. We decided that there was a concert in front of the palace and when we finished our lunch we would walk back up the hill and watch it. As we finished our food we heard the bagpipes start moving away. We rushed to the top of the hill just in time to see the bagpipe band marching down the street away from the palace. When we asked people about it, we found out that what we had heard was the changing of the guard ceremony, and we had missed it while eating hotdogs. We inquired as to when the next ceremony would be and were told that there was a schedule in front of the palace gates. Checking the schedule, we were sad to find out that they only have the changing of the guard every other day and we would be in Scotland by next time. Sure would have loved to have gotten pictures.

While walking through the park we came across two old men sitting on one of the park benches. They were quite the characters. We started talking to them and quickly knew that sitting in the park and entertaining the tourists was a big part of their daily life. One of the old men named Mike told us that he used to have three girlfriends and no bank account. Then he said that now he has no girlfriend and three bank accounts.

Then he pointed across the park a ways where there was a squirrel under a bench. He told us that was Susie. He started calling, “Susie, Susie, come here girl”.  Susie’s head popped up and she turned to look at old Mike. Suddenly she came running across the grass as fast as she could go. She jumped up on the arm of the park bench. Then she leapt up onto his shoulder and then onto a hat he was wearing. He put a peanut in his teeth. Little Susie scooted forward on the hat until she was leaning out over his face. She put her front feet on his cheeks and gingerly pulled the peanut from his teeth. They repeated this little ritual several times. When Mike stopped putting peanuts in his teeth, Susie jumped down and scampered away. That was one of the cutest things I have seen. As you can tell, I still think of it often.

There are a lot of grand and magnificent things I have seen in my life, but it is funny how it is the little things that life is really made of. They are also the times we usually remember the most. Spectacular moments are impressive, but the little moments are what make life what it is.

Hold on to the little moments. They are what make you who you are, and what you will cherish when you grow old.

I will tell you more about the UK trip in future posts. It was a wonderful trip. I recommend it to everyone.