As I write this, I am stuck in the San Jose Airport- trying with difficulty to not make eye contact with anyone. I’ve found that San Jose-ians (Jose-ites?) are excessively friendly, making it impossible to eat lunch alone, keep a mean demeanor in criminal court as an out of town hired gun and, yes, blog in quiet. I was so taken by the San Jose-ffians, that I came back to airport immediately after court and tried to make the 4:30 flight back to San Diego. Okay, I mostly wanted to make the flight to try to make a meeting with other defense attorneys back in San Diego. I told myself that I didn’t have time to smell the roses here in crazy-ville.
It struck me that I was a little like my parents in this attitude. My cousin Mayra and I used to complain that my parents wouldn’t take time out of business trips to take us sightseeing. Every summer, until I and then Mayra went to college, we used to drive with my parents from San Diego to Wisconsin to sell merchandise at the Wisconsin State Fair. We’d pass a few miles from the Grand Canyon on the way, but in over a decade of going to the fair we never stopped.
“It’s a hole in the ground,” said my father when he even acknowledged our demands. In truth, he wasn’t completely wrong about this, I thought when I went to see the Grand Canyon years later as an adult with my wife.
“Just beautiful, isn’t it?” She said
“Umm….”
So, I thought to myself as I drove back to the airport, Was I following in my parent’s footsteps? Would I have been better served calling up one of my friends in the Bay Area (or maybe my nephew in Santa Cruz) and making the most of my trip? At this moment, I could be enjoying a clam chowder in a bread bowl instead of my airport Jamba Juice (though it is “peach pleasure”!).
Then I think that the important thing about San Jose is that I had business here- I started the process of defending a client from her charges and I brought important business to my year and a half old firm.
There’s a time and place for everything, right? After all, the prettiest thing about the Grand Canyon wasn’t it’s majestic depth, but the lady next to me.
The times that I helped my parents at the state fairs, likewise, aren’t memorable for the sights that we saw or didn’t see, but because it was time spent with family.
So, the heck with San Jose! Southwest, hurry up and take me home!
