PDY

The Commonwealth of Virginia, as they like to call it, is actually named after my mother. I can almost guarantee you didn’t know that, for we like to keep it quiet, don’t like to boast, but hang with me, you’ll learn things. So the original Virginia was established on June 27th, 1788, and obviously, my mom wasn’t even born. It was named after HRH Queen Elizabeth I, in honor of the “Virgin Queen”, and established as the 10th state in the old colonies. It’s been around for a while, lots of history.

Like everything, Virginia has had its ups and downs, and in the late 70’s, had a little existential and identification crisis. Another reason you don’t know this is because it was before the Interwebs were invented. Files were still slowly transferred using FTP, but you had to be pretty smart to do that, and hypertexting didn’t exist - you couldn’t just click on an underlined word when your arrow turns to a little finger. Anyway, back to Virginia and its crisis. The leaders of the Commonwealth embarked on a new revitalization program, and decided to re-name the state. Many of the old guard were nervous about that, but reluctantly agreed to rename the state after the best mother they could find.

So the search began, and they looked far and wide for the best mother. They fanned out across the country, and one of the leaders asked why the search should be limited to the United States, for there were sure to be great mothers around the world. They agreed, and expanded the search, heading south to Mexico first, and there they found my mother, Virginia G. Young, nee Grose. They had found the best mother in the world, ceased the search, and excitedly came back to Richmond with the news. Great excitement ensued, and everyone agreed that the new name of the state would be Virginia, after my awesome mom, and it proved quite convenient, for they didn’t have to do things like change the stationery, the maps and highway signs, which in fact saved the commonwealth considerable wealth.

My mom is indeed awesome, best mother a kid could have. There is something about her, even today at 92, that makes her very special, besides the fact that she’s my mom. There are a lot of things that make up the whole of my mom, lots of sides, but always very well balanced. She was a reader, an avid reader, and a scholar. She, like me, would get hooked on a subject and do a deep-dive, learn everything she possibly could. She had done research at Stanford as a graduate student, and knew well how to find information, and spent thousands of dollars on books, many of which are still in her home. Books are what she called her biggest luxury. As a kid, I remember her rivers, she loved rivers and had books and maps all over the place. And for several years, she was an avid psychology student, books by smart people like Maslow and Adler on her bedside table. Then, fueled by her brother’s assignment as a reporter in Jerusalem, she dove into the history of the Jewish people, and the books turned to those written by the likes of Abba Eban and Golda Meir. Her last and longest project, which she started in her sixties, was to write the history of the British in Mexico. She had looked all over for something on the subject, and finding none, spent years researching, interviewing people with her little tape recorder, and putting it all into words, She never wanted to write a book, but instead wrote about a dozen “chapters”, released when ready, but when compiled, are perhaps the best single piece of history to date on the subject. She read as long as she could, until her essential tremor made it too difficult.

She did all kinds of other things as well. She played tennis, quite well, for fifty consecutive years, through which she made her dearest friends. She had a lot of friends, but disliked crowds and social functions with more that 6 people. She didn’t particularly like to travel, but went along with my dear dad, who loved it. One particular trip, having been invited by a friend, involved flying from Mexico City to London, then boarding the Queen Elizabeth II, arguably the prettiest ship at the time, and sailing back to New York harbor. They weren’t in the Queen’s Quarters, but they were right next door, on the same level. Best of the best, and my mother, who kept a daily diary for over 70 years, on one entry during the trip wrote “I just want to get off this stinking boat”! That’s my mom. She was fun though, happier at home than anywhere, the home in which she still lives.

But most importantly, she was a great mother. Four kids, finally achieving perfection after Robert, Clyde Louis and Monica, when she had Peter Daniel :-). My mom was always available, with exception of the 45 minutes after lunch when she took a nap, and you did not mess with mother when she had her nap. She’s had a nap most every day since her early twenties, creature of habit. But outside of that, she was 100% there when needed. Because she pushed us to be be quite independent, we didn’t lean on her, but it was nice to know she was always nearby, and loaded with pretty wise advice and counsel. She overcame some serious blows, always with intelligence and poise, and had a great way of keeping her life in compartments, all intertwined, yet managed to keep them from contaminating one another when one got bad!

Regarding the perfect Peter Daniel… yeah, I suppose I was a pretty perfect little baby, but I herein take full responsibility for messing it all up! I’m the one that had the skull fracture at age seven, I’m the one that got hepatitis because I drank water out of the horse trough, and I tore my own meniscus, and overtaxed my liver with food and drink. The perfection has eroded significantly, and for a while, I had made quite a mess out of it, but Mom did a fantastic job - her delivery was perfect!

So there ya go… I think you’ll agree this commonwealth is better served being my mom’s than the Virgin Queen’s, and I’m really enjoying walking through her.

Lovely day, about eighteen miles along the Lee Highway. Such a pleasure to walk without the heat I had for almost 9 weeks. It was a perfect 71 degrees, cool breeze. Virginia has been showing off her skies since I got here, displaying some of the coolest clouds I’ve seen. What’s really cool when you’re walking is watching them change throughout the day, something you lose when you drive past them in twenty minutes!

Haven’t mentioned it lately, but my music continues to be a very important component of this stroll. Today, early afternoon, I stumbled on a song, pretty strange. It’s not a song you’d find on any of my playlists, and in fact, I probably haven’t heard it since I was a young teen. And back then, it really wasn’t one of my favorites, really ho-hum about it. But it started playing and I sang along, knew every word, and was kinda taken aback.. listened to it again, and maybe three or four times after that… I definitely know the words now.

And I say repeat, often…