I remember that one year my parents took us to Detroit for Thanksgiving.  It was supposed to be a surprise for my grandparents, that all their children and grandchildren would be home for Thanksgiving.

I had sprained my wrist on the playground at school, and I had some sort of soft cast on my arm.  We drove up in my dad’s tiny hatchback car instead of renting a car, I’m not sure why.  I got to sit on the end the entire time, never having to sit in the dreaded middle seat, because of my injury.

My dad had us practice saying “Ciamar a tha?” all the way up to Detroit, to say to my Grandpa when he saw us.

I don’t remember how the “surprise” went off, I was only 9.  I do remember sitting at my grandmother’s table for Thanksgiving dinner, and Grandma cut all my food up in tiny bites for me.  I had to eat left-handed because of my arm.

I can remember going up, but I don’t remember the trip home.  Like all trips to Detroit, the best part was getting and being there, not going home.  Playing the license plate game with Kevin and hearing Dad sing “Are we there yet? (no it’s just a stop sign) Are we there yet? (you’re driving me out of my mind)” which I am still not sure if that is a real song or not.

My grandparents: Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald
My dad: Dave Ferguson, Hughie and Greet’s son
Kevin: Rose’s brother

My parents came from Detroit to visit us in northern Virginia several times. It may have been their first visit to the house we had on Gainsborough Drive in Fairfax County. I don’t recall the year, but Kevin, my youngest, wasn’t very old — maybe 10.

Kevin was bright but sometimes shy, and my parents were mostly strangers to him. Since I knew Dad liked playing cards, I got the two of them together and suggested that Kevin show grandpa how to play solitaire on the computer. They headed off to the upstairs room where the computer was.

The next day, Kevin told me he’d gotten up in the middle of the night and found grandpa on the computer, still playing solitaire.

I felt like showing off Kevin a bit more, so I took mom and dad up to the computer room with him.

I said, “Kevin showed you how to play solitaire. But you probably want to play some other card games, too.”

Dad said he liked all kinds of games, like cribbage and euchre.

“Good,” I said. “Kevin, why don’t you see if any other computers know anything about euchre?”

Kevin used a search engine — I don’t think Google was available yet. I explained the result to my parents.

“Kevin just asked this computer to ask other computers if they know anything about euchre. It asked 12 million computers (or whatever the number was), and it said that these 120,000 do.”

They were impressed.

Kevin and I studied the list of results.

“Okay, it looks like this computer in Australia might have a euchre game. Let’s go see.”

Kevin went to that site, and sure enough, they had a euchre game.

“Now Kevin’s asking that computer in Australia to let us have a copy.”

A few minutes later, the file was downloaded.

“All right, Kevin,” I said. “Let’s start the file up.”

Kevin knew what he was doing. Less than 10 minutes after we began, he started up the euchre game. I turned to Dad.

“Now, I don’t know how to play euchre, and neither does Kevin. But if you tell him what’s supposed to happen, he’ll figure out how to make it happen on the computer.”

By the end of the visit, Kevin and Dad were getting along just fine, and Dad got in a lot of euchre.