Sylvia's Journal

The return to the grid meant an avalanche of emails. I noticed my sense of despair mounting as the emails kept coming in. All this stuff I need to read and many to act on in the next 10 days made me a little nervous, yet I didn’t want to cut my vacation short by getting a head start. All would have to wait until Tuesday.

This week and the next will be short weeks. On Friday I am off to Marlborough for the last of my three coaching face-to-face intensives, 30 hours in 3 days. And then, on September 11 I resume my travel, with Entebbe as a first stop and Jo’burg the next. By the time I come back it is fall; that too depresses me.

All this anticipation drains me and so I am trying as hard as I can to live in the present. This is something I am learning from my grandson, who is so very much present to each moment. His future, at least in his mind, does not yet exist (he’s right on that account) and his past extends only minutes back. Oh, to be able to wander around the world like he does, being enchanted by everything he finds on his way: a leaf, a rock, a puppy, a sea gull, even sea gull poop.

After we said goodbye yesterday we re-arranged the furniture that had been used as a barrier to the non baby-proofed places in our living room and moved all the baby paraphernalia upstairs. Axel cleaned the Small Point mussels and I read the Sunday NY Times, nearly from cover to cover.

In the evening we motored in and out of Gloucester Harbor on a sunset and evening cruise to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of friends. We calculated that we have 17 more years to go before we get to celebrate our 50th. Our friends told us happily they plan to be there. They will be close to a 100, which will be, by then, the new ‘old age.’ And so we think they will.

And now Labor Day is upon us. It is morning and everything is possible still, leaving me with so many delicious choices: knit, read, bake, a harvesting trip into the garden? We are now awash in produce and fruits, the blackberry bush heavy with juicy black fruit and the garden full of red tomatoes and greens that call out ‘harvest us please!’ It rains, making for an easier easing in and one less chore, the watering of the garden.

On our last full vacation day we visited our friends at Small Point which has the biggest sandy beach Faro has ever seen. He could dribble anywhere he wanted, including into the tiny waves that rolled for miles over just inches of depth. By the time we loaded him into the car he was covered head-to-toe with the fine grains of sand, mica and shale. It made a nice contrast with his pale skin and his blond baby hairs.

Saturday was packing up and cleaning up day. We squeezed in a last breakfast, an art show before cleaning the house and then drove back to Lobster Cove. As we entered Manchester Axel and I pretended we were going to a new B&B called Lobster Cove B&B, commenting on the cute town and all the things it had to offer and what we’d be doing in this town. When we arrived at our home we found Faro already in bed, Sita selecting a good mystery to watch and Jim off to get pizzas.

I woke up on Sunday morning with that in-the-pit-of-my-stomach-knowing that all good things must come to an end, combining the end of vacation-feeling with the end-of summer feeling that makes Labor Day weekend a little melancholic. We squeezed in a few more vacation activities. Starting with Zumi’s lattes we headed off to Todd’s Farm in Ipswich, a place where people come to buy and sell stuff, some of which I didn’t even know was worth anything. It is a place where the contents of our basement would not be out of place; we are also painfully reminded of all the stuff we threw out when Penny died, and things we are periodically throwing out when all our stuff creeps up on us.

The first buyers show up, according to Sita, at 5:30 AM. By the time we got there closer to 10 some were already packing up as dark clouds were gathering. We were much too late to chance upon the kind of treasures featured at Antiques Roadshow. I nearly managed to leave the place without buying more stuff except I couldn’t leave without getting a set of starched linen dishtowels and a trivet that we call in Dutch ‘asbestos-plaatje’ which is probably illegal these days. It was the Dutch scene that clinched the deal, a boy and girl in traditional Dutch dress, tulips, clogs and windmills. All for three dollars and 50 cents.

I had one last time with Faro on the beach while Sita and Jim took advantage of having two free and willing babysitters at home. And then they drove off to their Easthampton home, leaving us sad and teary eyed waving as the car turned the corner. I think the old set up of intergenerational living in the extended family compound had something going for it with its built-in care for the very old and the very young. We could start a compound here at Lobster Cove.