The title does not refer to the soap opera that ran for my entire childhood, or one of the many other television shows of the same name.

I’m talking about my sister and her husband. She’s a Ph.D. English professor and he is a psychiatrist. Peggy and I refer to them as the doctors.

My sister and her husband met as freshmen in college, and Peggy and I began dating in high school. So, the four of us have known each other as couples since 1980. We love to do things together, and once their youngest son went to college we began inviting them to travel with us. In recent years inviting has turned to harassing…

They finally agreed to travel this year. My sister wanted to do it over her Spring Break, so we told them to pick a place. We knew that the psychiatrist had a conference the following week in Atlanta, so we were fully prepared for the choice to be Charleston, Savannah, or any of several other cool coastal locales. When the suggestion came back to go to Cleveland, we had to be careful. We did not want to go to Cleveland, but neither did we want to scare off the baby deer making its first foray into traveling with us. I suggested that perhaps Cleveland was a better choice in October rather than in winter. When the next option came back as Memphis, we jumped at it!

Memphis is cool and reasonably close — notwithstanding our eleven hour journey to get here. Lots of stuff to do and decent weather in March. Blues and barbecue. Thank you, thank you very much.

Today will be our first day to venture out since arriving late last night. I’m really looking forward to walking without the boot I’ve been wearing for several weeks (I brought it just in case). Let’s get this show on the road!