We actually see quite a lot on Facebook. Jeffrey and Melodie are in Texas, Annie ate a burger in Yunnan, and somebody shot themselves while bowling, but since they weren't members of the family, I'll leave that to your Google searches.
We had a short visit south this week, but special. Hard to believe we were only gone two nights. First we headed to New Jersey where we joined Peter and Janet at a concert by Mary Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin. All these years, and we've never seen Mary Chapin play live. It was wonderful, especially the concept of the two singers on stage exchanging songs and conversation topics as if they were in their living room. We had a nice dinner a Thai restaurant and a chance to catch up on all matters, that night and at breakfast the next day. We heard that Johanna is spending a week at Martha's Vineyard and Sean was heading into his last exam. He has landed a summer job in northern NJ. Peter and Janet are planning a trip out to Seattle this summer.
We got up the next morning and went to DC, where we had a great barbecue with Joe, Margaret, Andrew and Joe's housemate Greg. Mary's friend, Gerry, at whose house we were staying joined us for a locavore sausage meal, where guess who ate too much? Just one person. Margaret made brownies with home-made caramel. Guess who had two? What's ll this talk about a cleansing diet? Joe had just returned from an extended trip to India, filled us in on what he did there. Margaret and Andrew recounted their hair-raising story of an intruder. Everyone's busy at work.
We had planned to spend the weekend there, but headed home on Friday as one of Mary's cousins passed away and the funeral was Saturday. Patrick Hayes, who at 62, died of a heart attack. In his service the priest noted that "out of weakness comes strength, and strength helps to deal with weakness." Pat had been struck with a debilitating illness for the last several years, but he has a large and close family whose strength was everywhere evident.
Danny had come up for the funeral, and we saw John and Marilyn there as well. They went from the church right to Lowell, as Colleen graduated, with a Masters in nursing, on Saturday, Congratulations Colleen. What a long haul, of work and study and showing dogs!
Mary is at a yoga class right now; I walked five miles today with a pack on my back to get ready for the great Scotland adventure, which starts in a little more than a month. I have to be in better shape. This week, I go to a training for volunteer guides at the Herman Melville home in Pittsfield. Hmm. When I read Moby Dick, in September 1976, waiting for school to start in Lastourville Gabon, I never thought I'd a) be serving as a guide at his home, where that was and b) have finished that book. Uggh.
Such are the twists and turns. You got some?
Love from up here.
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