You Can Go Home Again

We have made it to one of my most anticipated stays along the roads of our journey. Denver, Colorado. Denver is a place we once thought, felt, and were convinced, would be the place where we would spend the rest of our lives. We came out here after graduating from the Univ of Connecticut in 1973. Cathy came to attend Denver University for grad school in special education, focusing on the field of speech and language. I followed because I had spent a college summer in Aspen in 1969, had really liked Colorado and liked her more. Marriage followed only months later. We went back to New Jersey for that and what turned out to be one of the greatest parties of my life. Back to Colorado, we set roots and made a family with both our kids being born here. We experienced a full and rich young married life making many friends, with many of those friends becoming the lifelong type. While we ended up moving on in 1986 thanks to my career and promotion/transfers, we still hold on to our roots in Colorado. We are back here now and it still feels like home.  We have had a whirlwind 5 day start to our Denver time with nonstop visits with many of these close friends. These are folks with whom time between visits disappears when we get together. That time evaporates and we are right back to where we were the last time we socialized. That is a beautiful part of that special relationship we all form with dear friends.  Denver, of course, has changed since those 70’s years. Grown immensely, it has blossomed beyond the ability of the infrastructure of the highways and all related to that to properly handle. Traffic is a nightmare. It is similar to other very popular places we have seen in our travels. To paraphrase the movie line from Field of Dreams, “Doesn’t matter if you build it or not, they will come”. That aside, it is still Denver. We are loving it. As stated, old friends are wonderful and do nothing but grow in importance as we get older.  We have spent our first five days with a full calendar of meals, bike rides, golf, more meals and endless conversations catching up with the lives of each other and reminiscing, ok...rehashing yet again, many of the moments, mostly hilarious, that we have shared. The next week promises, indeed is scheduled, with more of the same. It is great. Have I stated this?...I love Colorado. We can and have come home again.