A lot has changed in fifteen months but some things you hope will be just the same. Following a morning at the local shopping centre (waiting for Harriet to reach a point when she would contemplate breakfast) we set off for the I-80, destination Sacramento.
Our first destination was Homestead Studios, Gateway Oaks drive, H's first address. Everything was exactly the same and we posed for a photo outside room 221 where for so long we waited first for Harriet and then for a passport.
We took a nostalgic walk by the drainage canal. I associate this mainly with the pre-Harriet period as I tried to kill time hoping that the call would come. For J it is mainly something he remembers doing with Harriet in her first pram. The only time I did it with her she was so tiny we carried her in a sling and one woman stopped to ask whether we had a baby or a dog in there. No danger of that now. She loved the walk because of all the weeds she could run through her fingers as we wheeled her by.
Our next stop was Applebees in the Truxel Road shopping centre. It was a toss up between that and the Dennys in downtown Sacramento but we reckoned the parking would be easier in the out of town mall. So much of our time was spent hanging around, waiting for the call that the highlight of our day was going out to eat.
Once H was here J was alone for most of the time so he often went out to shops and our next stop on the nostalgia tour was the Target store. Our nominal goal was to look for some clothes because Harriet is becoming filthy from the van and the stones outside but it was really a chance to wander round and try to recapture in a calmer way those very tumultuous times.
