Sylvia's Journal

Labor day signifies the end of summer. We already knew it from the shift in the air, crisp at night, no more need for fans or AC, and the days agreeable warm. We still occasionally swim in the cove, when we are not too busy with the management of stuff. This is why getting rid of stuff is so liberating – less management, more time to swim.

Whenever we can we take meals, breakfast, lunch, cocktails, sitting just above the beach. We have created a little eating corner with the bottom of an old bench and two chairs left behind after a party earlier this year, when the summer was just starting (sigh). I both love and hate this time of the year: love because it is Lobster Cove at its best, hate because winter is coming. 

I have put the finishing touches on a weekend in April on the island of Schiermonikoog, way over at the most northern-eastern point of Holland, close to Germany, surrounded by the Waddenzee, loosely translated as the ‘Flats sea,’ a part of the North Sea that empties with the tides. It will be a family fest, a ‘Vriesstock or Vriesenpalooza’ as my nephew calls it. Axel and I will celebrate our 40^thanniversary surrounded by our dear and noisy Vriesendorp siblings, those of their children and grandchildren who are around next April. We will show up with the 8 of us and it will be Faro’s and Saffi’s first trip to Holland.

Among the many things we are carting to Sita this weekend are Dutch books, so that the language barrier will not get in the way of the kids playing together and our son-in-law Jim can say and understand more that the word ‘paprika snippers,’ which he learned on his very first trip decades ago.

Our car could be mistaken for one that takes stuff to their kid’s dorm. But a look inside shows that it is filled to the gills with things that have accumulated after the student experience (mine and Sita’s): desk belonging to her great grandfather on which I studied for my final high school exams in the spring of 1969, books, photos and CDs from Sita’s school and early employment years, blankets from West Africa, an old map of China from the Cabots who left their stuff in the house we live in, to decorate Faro’s room – he will be the only one who can read it.And after that Tessa gets to pick up her stuff and we should finally be relatively free, free enough to empty one side of our office to install a heat pump and we can be warm this winter, and cool next summer. Free at last!