Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, where gratitude remains the sole expression at the start of every week on TheTwelfthStep, which for today is for my sister Laura’s recent summer birthday trip to Toledo!
A few months ago, just prior to me turning 50, Laura asked me what I wanted as a gift for the big milestone that was coming up. My answer was the only one I truly wanted, which was for her to come visit me. Seeing any of my remaining family at any point is an absolute blessing in my life, and her recent trip to Toledo was no exception.
From the moment I picked her up, our weekend was filled with many things to be grateful for. Our first day together we went to downtown Detroit and saw the Van Gogh Immersion exhibit, something we both have wanted to see for some time, and it was such an amazing experience, especially for the visual and hearing senses. Dinner that night was at Mark Wahlberg’s restaurant, Wahlburgers, in Greektown, and dessert afterwards from Astoria Bakery, quite possibly one of the best bakeries I’ve ever been to.
Our second day began with breakfast at The Speedtrap Diner in Woodville, Ohio. This diner is one of my favorite out-of-the-way unique joints to go to locally for a meal where the walls and ceiling have so much to look at and where it honestly feels like I’ve travelled back in time to the 1950’s. Not too far from there is The Schedel Gardens, a beautiful botanical garden and arboretum situated alongside the bank of a small river in Elmore, Ohio. There, we spent the afternoon and it might just have been the most peaceful and unique gardens I’ve ever visited, where there are multiple places to relax, each with a different theme that makes it ultimately feel like you’ve travelled to several different parks in the world. Dinner that night was a homecooked meal that included a sausage and cheddar lasagna, tossed salad, and garlic bread, all prepared from scratch by my partner Chris. The evening ended with watching a moving romantic film titled “Finding You”, a movie I first discovered on Prime and later bought for re-watching at home because I liked it so much.
Our final day included a trip to one of my top ten restaurants, The Melting Pot, which is an amazing experience if you like fondue. There, we had three courses of it beginning with a cheddar-based one, then a meat, fish, and vegetables one in a Coq Au Vin broth, and finally one with a cookies and cream milk and dark chocolate concoction that had an incredible assortment of things to dip into including cream puffs, salted caramel cheesecake, brownies, macaroons, and much more. It was most definitely a huge caloric experience that’s for sure, which is probably good that we went and played a totally fun game of putt-putt in Garden City, Michigan at Garden City Mini Golf.
While all of the experiences I shared with my sister were things to be grateful for, what I have the greatest gratitude for from her trip here was simply all the time we shared together talking, reconnecting, and bonding further together, given all the years we once were more apart as brother and sister. I will most certainly treasure the memories from her visit for some time to come, and it’s most definitely something to dedicate today’s Grateful Heart Monday to!
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
