Sylvia's Journal

It was an all day overcast vacation day for our Dutch visitors. This did not keep them out of the water and finally, I believe for the first time this summer, our various boats were used, including my Alden shell because Reinout and Maurits actually know how to row with a sliding seat. For Chicha it was a day full of balls and sticks and Frisbees that needed to be fetched, over and over again.

I tried to make it a work day as good as I could. My energy level is beginning to rise and I put in about half a day, mostly focusing on how to describe our past and future work in Afghanistan in ways that is aligned with the new US strategy in Afghanistan. This is still new territory for me.

I am teaching my youngest nephew how to use the bread maker since the consumption of bread and cheese has gone up fivefold.  This morning he also learned how to make pancakes and later today we will expand his repertoire with brownies.

Axel spent the entire afternoon walking across the estate with Chuck the septic system engineer to make sure we are putting the new system at the right place. We are getting some new-fangled experimental system; one part of it will look like a Jeu de Boules court I think. It’s very ingenuous and complicated, with fans and pumps inside it; as a result it also costs a lot. But the engineer claims it will outlive us and seems to know what he is talking about; his confidence is contagious. There are many approvals to get, a lengthy process he will lead and that starts this week.

The promise of a fire on the beach produced a surge of activities in preparation: raking the seaweed on big piles, collecting the wood, digging out the fire pit. The anticipation was hard to contain and before we knew it we had the largest roaring fire ever seen on Lobster Cove beach. This should not have surprised me since Reinout’s is the pyromaniac branch of my family.

Our parental home burned down in 1964, when Reinout was 6. The fascination with fire has stayed with him. When there is the promise of a fire he turns into that little boy again and so we had 3 teenagers ‘tending’ the fire instead of one adult and two teenagers. The dried seaweed was particularly attractive because it cracked and sparkled like Chinese fireworks, letting out enormous clouds of thick white smoke. I was surprised the fire brigade never showed up to berate us.

The fire was too big and hot to cook on and besides, the mosquitoes were everywhere, so we cooked and ate the lobster, clam and corn dinner inside. Axel was the lobster dismantling teacher, his every move closely followed by the three smoky boys. For Dutch people lobster is a delicacy they hardly ever eat and it was wonderful to watch everyone enjoy the meal.

After dinner we returned to the beach where the fire was still huge and hot and more seaweed fireworks were produced, mostly by Reinout who was having too much fun to let his sons tend the fire. I introduced them to s’mores, blending melted sugar, chocolate and cookie crumbs with mosquito repellent and sand.