They are still waiting for summer’s arrival in Milwaukee. We learned that during a weekend visit to see our newest grandson.

Eli Taylor is now three months old. We went to see how much he’d changed since our last visit shortly after his arrival.

My wife said it would be her last trip to see him if it requires her to fly via a connecting flight to Atlanta. For our previous trips we had found direct flights from New Orleans to Milwaukee and back, and once via the direct Amtrak link to Chicago. When we made reservations for this trip, direct flights were no longer available and Amtrak added a day each way to our travel time.

Which is what put us in the Atlanta airport on a Father’s Day weekend.

Airlines have apparently used stockyards as their business models, shifting large numbers of bodies more efficiently into increasingly smaller spaces. A difference is that the bodies in airports are all pulling wheeled contraptions behind them, especially now that the airlines added a surcharge for checked luggage.

We left New Orleans in the humid 90s and found Milwaukee in the upper 60s. With one exception a couple of weeks ago, the city has yet not seen more than 80 degrees for a high. Summer is occasionally optional here, my daughter worries, recalling several years earlier when a short, cool season arrived in its stead. Yet the city has grown lush as winter dormant flora races to catch up during the long daylight hours.

But Milwaukee residents determine season by the calendar, not by thermometer. On Father’s Day when we visited a beach on the Lake Michigan shore, we found them carrying on in beachside attire, playing volleyball in the sand, grilling and sitting on towels placed while surreally shrouded in a cool fog that had arisen as the warmer, moist air met the cold lake waters.

Harleys are no more loved anywhere than in their home city. Helmetless, middle-aged-plus and often overweight riders take full advantage of the fine riding weather.

Riders of bicycles are everywhere on the numerous routes provided for them. Parks and abundant green space are peopled with folks who just want to be outside after the long winter.

We spent considerable time on the floor with Eli. We are now told that this business of not allowing babies to sleep on their stomachs delays development unless they get an adequate amount of supervised “tummy time.” Eli was placed on the floor atop a quilt pallet and we flopped down beside him, encouraging him to root and scoot and rear his head. It is an activity very much within my level of competence and endurance. He tires sooner than I do.  

Then we took him for walks in his stroller, which is actually part of an infant conveyance system that also allows him to be locked securely in his car seat and perhaps also into a Harley sidecar if the need arises.

The trouble is that by the time Eli has been properly and securely locked and loaded into the contraption, he promptly falls asleep. We walked him anyway.