Sylvia's Journal

All you have to say to two 22-year old boys is that a girl currently holds the record. They want to break it, no matter what. And so, yesterday, on that blustery Sunday, with winds up to 40 knots and the temperature below 40 degree Fahrenheit, Pieter and Huib donned their bathing suits (why they brought these in their luggage is beond me) and immersed themselves in the frigid waters of Lobster Cove. Axel went out, dressed in a warm coat, to document the event. Documentation is important. You have to have proof. Here is is.

The previous record holder was my niece Willemijn who immersed herself in early May many years ago. This was never documented since she did not set out to create a new record. Our own first immersion is usually not until sometime in June and even that I find too early and much too cold.

It is fun to take the boys places and try to imagine the experience through their eyes. The things we take for granted, find normal, are not for a visitor. I am familiar with this feeling as it happens each time I leave the country.

I biked to Quaker meeting, heading into the fierce wind on my way to Beverly Farms. It was hard work but felt great after a Sunday morning breakfast with too many calories. On my way back it was smooth sailing with the wind pushing me home. I think I may have fallen asleep in Meeting, the hour went very fast and I enjoyed the quietness after having to be ‘on’ and constantly anticipating about what next for the last two weeks.

We took the boys to a performance of Chorus North Shore for its annual spring concert. This time it was ‘An American Quilt’ with some locally produced music. The piece de resistance for me was Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms which I found very moving. The children’s choir was an essential part of that rendering. Later Pieter and Huib (and everyone else) got to sing along with “This Little Light of Mine,’ and ‘America the Beautiful’ which must be an odd hymn for them. This would-be American national anthem is so very different from our Dutch (real) national anthem in which we sing lovingly of serving our Spanish King. After the performance we headed over to our favorite coffee place for a cup for tea/coffee in the Atomic Cafe.

The boys also got the American Sunday afternoon grocery shopping experience; this too is full immersion, followed in the evening by a very unamerican fajitas dinner. We watched in amazement the enormous quantities of food that these rather skinny kids take in (must be the bicycling!).

Back home the swimming challenge was unwittingly created by mentioning Willemijn’s feat some years ago. And while Axel was documenting the event I called Tessa in the hope to get her out of her funk, or at least for some temporary relief. They had just gotten another 2 foot snow dumped and the winter appears without end. No wonder she is thinking about finishing her studies in California! When everyone was back inside Ankie called from France and between Axel and me kept her on the phone for over an hour. This is a normal length conversation; there is always so much to talk about, even though she faithfully follows my journal. She knows much more about my life than I about hers, which is why we need at least an hour.

At the end of our very late dinner I was ready to go to bed. Sita was working against a deadline (still up at 3 AM I noticed), Jim was jamming with a friend in a music studio in Danvers and Axel and the boys sat down to watch ‘If,’ a movie Axel last watched in the late sixties. He remembered it as significant but now realized that may have had something to do with his not so mental clarity at the time (remember, the sixties!).