Fall foliage

Chalk up another September; another month that flew by.  How do you get it to slow down?  This week on the radio, I heard Rich Steves interview Paul Theroux on the subject.  He’s 85 years old and thought he had done his last trip.  Then he drove across Canada (for his new book True North) and found that he was ready to do another trip. He says travel slows down time, especially for people his/our age. Otherwise, one day feeds into another, and before you know it, entire months have passed by.

And that’s what September has felt like for me.  With one exception. Health.  A sore back surely slows down time. Why can’t it get better as quickly as the days pass by?

Speaking of travel, Mary is on a plane right now, coming back to Pittsfield after a few days in Florida. She is wrapping up Timmy’s estate which means unloading his house and car and his personal effects. All the work she has put into this process has made us rethink the six storage areas on our property, including a new shed which is getting full pretty fast.  Sorry, Joe, Margaret, Annie.

Speaking of health, Lur’s two siblings are facing major health issues.  Her brother lives close by, but her sister is way down south.  Can’t be easy times.

I’ll tell you what are easy times.  Birthdays!  Happy greetings to Paula and Tina, and to Johanna whose big day is tomorrow!  Party time. Paula and David headed to the true north  for her celebration at Niagara on the Lake. That means they crossed the border and could probably see Lake Ontario easily.  (I couldn’t resist.)  Anyway, what a wonderful way to spend one’s birthday!

I need to do a correction. Last letter, I kind of intimated that Joe went to Scotland for a St. Andrews reunion. (Cue the loud buzzer noise – wrong.) He joined a bachelor party that included a college classmate. While he was gone, Leonor took the children to a play. Anyone else hear of ToToRo? Or am I the last one on the planet to take in this latest children’s character? Story? Looks like they enjoyed it – that’s the important part.

Annie’s home. And they’re back to their project full time. They have a new house(s) design, and are tackling all the myriad questions that come with building – what kind of wood do they want for their floors, and more serious, water and electricity. Looks like it will be wonderful when completed – with plenty of room for guests!

Down in DC, Darcy got a case of pink eye, and then was kind enough to share it with her mother. Through it all, she put on a happy face. Not sure she has any other kind of face. Margaret said she was busy supporting the chaos of the UN General Assembly. Sadly, I never got to work on one of those.

Football season has started, as have the baseball playoffs and the WNBA playoffs. Too bad I can’t upload Darcy’s commentary on the Patriots’ game last Sunday.  She could have just as easily been talking about the Bengals. Spoiler alert – it’s 45 seconds of raspberry sounds.

We’re approaching peak leaf season here. Thankfully, we did not get any damage from the storm, and Mary was even able to take her flight to Daytona in the middle of it. Looks like a lot of flooding in New Jersey and the Carolinas. 

Hope everyone is well, and Love from up here!

 

 

End of summer

September 16 sounds familiar.  What happened? Whose birthday?  Hmmm.  I know. It was my first day of radiation last year.  There’s a date to forget.  This week I go to Boston for my sixth injection of hormone therapy.  Only two more after that.

There’s a buzz of chatter coming from the other room.  It’s Mary’s Zoom book club who decided to meet in person, for the third time. They’re here for a couple of days, and they found other topics to talk about besides books.  Go figure. They’ve known each other, some of them, for almost 70 years.

They did bring wonderful food – cookies, breads, meals, crackers and cheese etc.  they can come back. And we took on a little excursion to …. You guessed it, Herman Melville’s home. There’s a book for a book group.

We had our own road trip too over Labor Day weekend.  Fortunately, we did not have to wrestle with traffic. We went the opposite direction up to northeast Maine for a reunion of folks who were in Gabon with us 50 years ago.  There, too, we did not run out of topics to discuss, as we had a lot of gaps to fill in, and lots of memories to try to dredge up.

It looks like Matthew and Tina checked off another NY state park, this time to the 1000 Islands. Not sure if that is technically a park, but they sure hit the sites: Boldt Castle, Rock Island Lighthouse, Cape Vincent Lighthouse. I need to find out where they stayed because I have always wanted to spend time in this spectacular setting, in the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Annie and Sankhar are back in India. Wow, what a trip they’ve had. Now it’s back to their project with renewed energy and enthusiasm.  Italy, Croatia, Portugal, England – I’m sure I missed a country or two.

They didn’t make it up to Scotland, but Joe did.  Can you believe he graduated more than 20 years ago?  He went solo since his children went back to school, including Luisa, her first day at REAL school.

Out west, Andrew reports on a visit home by Daniel, and a Phish concert that Billy and Myles went to.  So, Pop did take us to the New Christy Minstrels one summer.

Down in DC, the pool closed.  Summer’s officially over. But Simon is trying out for a new swim team. He, by the way, continues to find ways to amuse his sister, and himself, and the rest of us.

We have done some fall planning, which includes putting on the back burner our scheduled road trip out to Oklahoma.  Instead, we will take up our friend Valerie’s offer to join her in Berlin for a week.  That’s right, Germany, not Maine. She grew up there and has incredible stories of living through the war and its aftermath before finally coming to the states for graduate school.  Forever in her mind are the Gis who showed up at her door with candies.  It actually happened.

Another sad anniversary of sorts was the one year that has passed since we lost Johnny, Mary’s brother.  Still hard to believe.

Love from up here.