With all of us vaccinated, not even the strictest governor could find fault with our merry gathering in Merion Station.
What a glorious week we enjoyed, sharing laughs and hugs like we were free people again, which of course we've always been, in essence.
Throughout our stay, Gina, Laszlo and Emma were paragons of xenia love.
Don't know what xenia means? I first heard the word on the Hawaii cruise Julie and I took just before the Covid-19 lockdown. This morning I was reminded of xenia while listening to The 7 Love Types. It's an interesting book made more so to me personally because I know the author, Dr. Christian Heim, who is also a talented pianist. On Audible, the book is pleasantly narrated by his wife, Dr. Caroline Heim, who is an actress as well as psychologist. I would say former actress, but they did some funny skits together as guest psychology lecturers on that Hawaii cruise.
We're most familiar with the Greek root of the word used in xenophobia, which is dislike or prejudice against people from another country. It is a term often spat at people who favor strong borders with legal immigration, regardless of their underlying nuances or better intentions. In any case, xenia is the exact opposite of that. Xenia is warmly welcoming and then catering to others.
Laszlo picked up Julie and I at the Philadelphia airport as soon as we had claimed our luggage.
Arriving at their home in Merion Station, we were greeted with warm smiles and big hugs. In the spacious guest room where we were privileged to stay during our last visit at Thanksgiving, we found a welcome basket better than any professional Bed & Breakfast, with bottled waters and various snack bars.
Gina had planned out meals and treats throughtout our stay that made it a series of celebrations, including Gina's birthday, Star Wars Day ("May the Fourth Be With You!"), Cinco de Mayo Sushi, Jell-O Martinis (non-alcoholic) Happy Hour, Amy's birthday (including freshly made flafels and zucchini bread) and the grand finale, Mother's Day Brunch, when Laszlo's parents Ria and Szilard drove down from Nanuet, New York, to join us. Often the meals were elaborate spreads of food choices, with the brunch the grandest of them all, including a delicious oatmeal, blueberry and pecan baked dish and a yogurt bar. We all enjoyed the family activity of pitching in to help Gina prepare the feasts on her menu.
Amy drove down from Jersey City on Wednesday to join us for five days. As luck would have it, her bosses announced a chic soiree at a fancy Auto Club in New York City for Thursday night, but Amy decided to continue with her original plan to come spend time with family, for which we are grateful, although we definitely would have understood had she chosen the tempting alternative.
I embarrassed Amy by walking in on her make-shift remote office to get a mask while she was on a Zoom call with the head of her company on Friday morning, but I guess that at least verified that she had indeed told the truth about her parents visiting.
One bright spot of this shutdown has been the flexibility for people with office jobs to work remotely. Amy's boyfriend Lukas joined us on Friday evening. The battery research and manufaturing company where he works has re-opened its offices, which he finds useful in collaborating on engineering design, but he was able to take the train from Edison, NJ, to meet us in Merion Station.
He arrived as we were watching the second half of "Tangled," a Disney cartoon from a few years ago. Not having children at home, Julie and I have missed more than a few of these animated musicals, which may be geared toward children but are often quite excellent viewing for adults, too.
Our loving hosts, who normally eschew television shows and in fact don't have a dedicated TV but rather just use tech-whiz Laszlo's large computer monitor, had signed up for Disney Plus during out stay to keep us entertained. We also watched "Hamilton," another great movie that we thoroughly enjoyed split over three nights.
Emma had waited for us to arrive to watch the much-anticipated "Wanda Vision," a rather odd combination of Marvel Comics and TV sitcoms through the decades, which I think you need to see for yourself to understand. We enjoyed munching popcorn during the episodes or movie segments
More often than watching enertainment on the screen, however, we went for beautiful springtime walks through parks and picturesque residential streets lined by leafy trees, vibrant flowers and gorgeous, historic homes. Emma even let me walk her to school a few times while birds chirped in the trees in the early morning.
Being our family, we of course also played lots of games, including Monopoly, poker, Tripoley and Croquet. I do a crossword puzzle almost every morning, and it was a real treat that Emma and Amy helped me with them during our stay.
Gina and Laszlo now commute into Drexel University to work in person on a few days a week now. Emma has returned to full-time, in-person school. Her excellent school district being back in session is undoubtedly part of the allure drawing city-dwellers from downtown Philadelphia and New York City to live in "the Mainline" suburbs, creating a strong seller's market in real estate.
Julie and I have been contemplating buying in the area when our place in Redondo Beach sells, but new listings are snapped up in a matter of days if not hours, with bidding wars pushing pricing well above asking prices. I believe that prices have gone up 10% since Thanksgiving.
One day when Gina took the metro train into work, Julie and I borrowed their car to drive further north of Philadelphia, where prices are lower or buy considerably more house. We saw a French chateau fit for a mistress of King Louis XIV at the price of a 1-bedroom condo in Redondo Beach, but Google Maps took us on a route through traffic jammed city streets that put a sour taste in our mouth before we arrived.
After looking at a few other properties, we came back on a lovely winding road through a treesy park, but by then we had determined that we really didn't want to be that inconveniently located if we'd bemoving primarily to be near family. We looked at a few more places in Wynnewood, but nothing seemed like exactly the right fit at this time.
Throughout the trip, we felt enveloped in love.
No matter how much Zoom and playing Bridge online help keep us sane, there's no substitute to being in the presence of loved ones, feeling their joy and auras or whatever it is that creates the chemical reactions in our brains that Dr. Heim describes in his book. That make us feel our best.
It will be wonderful when everyone is free again to enjoy all that we have come to expect from life on this beautiful garden planet, including cruises with strangers who soon become warm acquaintences by sharing time and space in meaningful ways.
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