Sylvia's Journal

We slept in a little doll bed in a little doll room  in a little doll house that is placed in a row along a semicircle with other doll houses like it. At the back of the small cabins is a  gurgling brook; the tiny front porches look out over a grass strip that separates us from Route 3, aka Daniel Webster Highway. We are in New Hamsphire, at the entrance of the White Mountains National park. It is the weekend of the Magnuson Family reunion, organized by the Paul Magnuson branch out of their family cabin, the Moog, in Franconia.

Sita picked the place some months ago. It only had pictures of the cabins in the winter and looked quite quaint. Of course there was no picture of the road. Its other selling point was that it allowed Tessa to take Chicha. We occupy two cabins between the nine of us, one each side of the cabin with the perfectly groomed Scotties, two low by the ground and one quite tall on its legs, no doubt another breed but its haircut is the same as the others. They are very stately dogs compared to our playful grandpuppy.

We left in four batches from Manchester but first Steve arrived back from Canada after a 9 hour nonstop drive, only minutes after Tessa had left for work on the five-something train to Boston. We left Steve sleep and so we did not see him. Axel took care of the estate, again, and some medical issues, I telecommuted, Reinout worked on what looked like an academic paper (he is after all a professor) and the  boys discovered Singing Beach.

At 1:30 I set out in the first car with Reinout and Maurits. We were bent on beating the Friday summer exodus from Boston to the north. We succeeded fairly well after comparing experiences with the cars that followed at 3:30 from Lobster Cove (Axel and Michiel), at 4:30 from Boston (Tessa, Steve and Chicha) and at 5:30 (Sita and Jim),from Lobster Cove.

As the advance troops we checked in, reconnoitered the place, assigned sleeping places, bought and cooked dinner and welcomed all the subsequent arrivals with cold beer, gin tonics or wine; we had already finished the chips, something I had forgotten about teenage boys (it’s contagious). Maurits had bought the Dutch Chocolate icecream to remind him of his homeland.

It’s 6 in the morning now. Except for Reinout everyone is still sound asleep. He is checking out the wifi that is supposedly here by walking around with his computer. I am sitting at a picnic table looking at the fast flowing brook and recovering from a difficult night that produced a sore arm and shoulder. I did not have the right pillow arrangement around my shoulder and I am paying for that now.

We do find the best spot for the wifi which is also the place where the mosquitoes congregate so that each hit of the keyboard has to be alternated with a hit of a mosquitoe on one body part or another. We are waiting for the sun to chase them all away.