My daughter Rachel, who relocated to the south east England county of Kent a few month’s ago, has been back home in West Yorkshire for a few days. My youngest offspring taking advantage of her partner’s weekend in the Lake District; he dropping her at her childhood home on his way to Cumbria.
This morning I took Rach for a Costa coffee, where we caught up on each others life events and plans since our last rendezvous in December. As I’d around £7 saved on my coffee house loyalty card, I concluded Costa was the ideal location for this familial assemblage. I love my 26 year old daughter unconditionally, but if I can avoid bankrolling her coffee with hard earned cash then I’m not gonna turn that down!
During our banter, Rachel excitedly informed me about her recent booking of an American trip in September – Advising that New York, California and Yosemite being the destinations in her provisional itinerary.
New York a metropolis my daughter has loved since teenage years; an era when she was a huge fan of the US crime scene drama CSI. Bizarrely, though, this love manifested from habitual viewing of CSI:Miami, not the CSI:NY element of the franchise, which apparently she wasn’t overly enamoured with!!
Seriously, though, Rach is enchanted by the Big Apple, a place she first visited a decade ago on a school trip. My daughter’s previous travels to the USA have also seen her visit Yellowstone Park to witness the Milwaukee set used in ABC sitcom ‘Joanie Loves Chachi’
If time permits in September, Rach also plans a trip to Montana’s Glacier National Park. This morning confiding in me her motivation behind this particular travel aspiration being “I’ve always wanted to see the leaning tower of Pisa, dad!”
As you’ll have probably learned from the previous paragraph, despite being relatively well travelled, Rachel doesn’t possess the most in depth of geographical knowledge. However, I’m loathed to mock her for this as the lass has a good heart…… It goes with her two good kidneys which I donated after losing a bet……. Luckily I had three (kidneys that is)
Hopefully you can learn from my foolishness of betting your daughter (or indeed anyone) they can’t con you into donating two kidneys. To add salt to my wounds she didn’t actually need them as hers organs work perfectly well; this despite habitual boozy weekends in her late teens. Like Shylock when insisting he received a pound of Antonio’s flesh in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Rachel always robustly demands you settle losing bets.
Anyhow, enough of this nonsense. Organ donation and transplant surgery is not a topic that should be discussed in a whimsical fashion. It should remain as a subject for the operating table, not aired among the daily natter from a kitchen table.
Apart from her ungrateful accusation that I’m a “tight sod!” for using my Costa points instead of cash to pay for her coffee, this morning, it was heartwarming to see my daughter for the first time in six weeks. She’s grown into an adult with many admirable qualities of whom I’m mightily proud.
Have a safe journey back to Kent, Rach!
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