May 2011 - Paradise Found

It’s hard to keep a blog about Maine life without starting each entry by covering the weather. I always wondered why my father-in-law started his emails with the subject line “Long Pond Weather” – now I know. The weather swings so dramatically here, and affects our daily routines much more than it ever did in the Bay. In March we had an ice storm that turned all of the birches into arches of sparkling roadside lace. The sun shone through a million tiny fingers of ice, with the white ground reflecting the light back into their grasp. Sometime in April, the snow started melting and running in rivers alongside the street. I was starting to think there was nothing beautiful about early spring until I noticed trickling streams carving paths all around us. Also, the puddles froze, melted, and refroze so many times that they formed multiple layers of ice, like a series of glass floors the kids loved to step through and shatter. Suddenly one day, the ice on the lake broke up and washed away, so fast that we were walking on it one week and looking out over rippling dark water two weeks later.

The snow vanished first in the driveway; in April we were still sledding on the side of the hill. Finally in May the last patch of pile-up between our trailer and the barn melted. Red-wing blackbirds emerged, we celebrated “Maple Sunday” by touring sugarhouses with the kids, then the grass and leaves sprouted and the ferns uncurled. Everything was latent, everything was waiting for just a few days of warmth to spring. In a Ray Bradbury story (“Frost and Fire”), a planet has such harsh conditions that its inhabitants have adapted to lives short and accelerated. This feels the same. With the scent of lilacs drifting in on summer-storm air, the buzz of insects, and our kids kicking off their sheets, it’s hard to imagine that less than two months ago we were packing snowballs, brewing Nut Brown Ale, and treating windburn – now it’s soccer, Apricot Ale, and sunburn.

The only thing worse than the long cold spell of a Maine winter is the quantity of insects that emerge when it’s over. The black flies seem to realize they only have a few weeks’ head-start on the dragonfly nymphs, so they swarm in desperation. This leads to some rather frisky spring behaviors, such as capering around in the driveway to get away from the flies while you wait for your kid to arrive on the bus, or surprising people with a smack upside the head when they have a mosquito, or snorting vigorously because you’re sure that bug that just went up your nose is still in there. For the three or so weeks of “black fly season,” when they’re at their worst, the only sport that really makes sense is biking. Knowing you have to go fast enough to keep the flies behind you turns out to be great motivation for pushing uphill.

Thanks to Zach’s parents, who were kind enough to let us stay here for so long while we searched for our “dream house,” we finally found it. Actually Zach did, one night while I was playing at the bi-monthly music jam in Lincoln. Despite the hours and hours I spend looking, he always finds the right thing just when we really need it. I came home a little discouraged that night because I hadn’t played my two songs as well (in front of the 150-member audience and 20 other musicians) as I could have if I wasn’t so damn nervous. Zach was excited, but he just said, “come see this” and showed me the listing for a log cabin on 24 acres that had popped up the day before. Less than 48 hours later – on a workday, and with the kids yanked out of school – we were down in South Berwick touring the place with offer papers in hand. So after having lived on a boat for five years, paying property tax on the mud below us (which actually belonged to the marina), we will be surrounded by fields, forest, and pasture. The house itself is not unlike the boat; rather small overall with wooden walls, propane energy (for now), skylights, and lots of built-ins. I think we’ll feel right at home.

February 2011 - Snow, Ice, and Romance

If this is as bad as it gets, we’re going to be fine. February is supposed to be the coldest month, and everyone in Lincoln tells me this is the harshest winter they’ve had in years. We’re up to about four feet in snow, which is turning into block ice. But our chickens are still alive, their eggs thaw out just fine, and we’ve quickly adapted to the new temperature. I’ve found the cold only bothers me when it drops below 10 degrees, and it only really upsets me below zero (those mornings I have to drive the kids to school at -8 are no fun). Jonah, who has the same internal thermostat as his father, runs from the trailer to the main house in a t-shirt and bare feet. It was all we could do to get him to come in at dark from the snow tunnel he’d been playing in all afternoon. In January he enthusiastically skied through a blizzard – he seems to be meant for the cold. Zora, for her part, thinks snow is a snack that grows on the ground and going “sledding” (pulled in a sled behind us while we ski) is the ideal time to nap, swaddled in snow clothes.

Having grown up in San Diego and the tropics, I have learned a lot about cold this winter. Here are my new rules for winter in Maine:

1. (Borrowed from Zora’s preschool) If your boogers are freezing inside your nose, it’s not a good day to play outside.

2. Warm the car up for at least 10 minutes before putting the baby in it.

3. Drive with gloves that have come from inside the house (if you leave your gloves in the car, they’ll start off so cold your hands won’t ever get warm).

4. Lift the windshield wipers off the windshield when you leave the car so they won’t get frozen on.

5. Give up on having diaper wipes in the car – they freeze into a block and stay that way for months. Carry a few in your purse instead.

6. Give up on having a clean car during the winter. The mud and salt return within 5 minutes of a car wash.

7. Forced air heating is a good way to inspire the kids to dress quickly (in the brief “window of opportunity” that the heat is pouring out).

8. Kids “cool off” in time-out out much more quickly when they have to stand outside.

So, where do you find romance in Lincoln, Maine in the middle of February? Zach and I have had some very nice “lunch dates” skiing on the lake midday while the kids are in school/daycare. One Saturday night we went out to the local Chinese institution and discovered they serve tiki drinks! I had figured my chances of finding tropical cocktails north of Bangor were pretty much nill, but right here in our town, next to the Marden’s fire and salvage, is a little oasis. A-yup. But the real action this month was at the kindergarten. Jonah was torn between two girls, the one who had already asked him to be her boyfriend (Olivia) and the one he really likes (Chloe). He came home one afternoon and announced he was “switching over” to Chloe. Among his school papers was a heart-shaped cutout upon which he had written the following declarations: “I am redee for valentine’s day beccuz I already have a girlfrend!” and “I love Chloe becuz she lafs at my joks.” Over the next few days, statements of love from Chloe (with drawings of flowers and pagodas, since they’re studying Chinese new year) appeared in Jonah’s backpack. Then one day he came home married, wearing a ring made out of a pipe cleaner and a gold bead. Apparently things had started out “all tangled up,” with Olivia proposing to Jonah and Jonah’s best friend Noah propositioning Chloe. Jonah swiftly redirected Noah to Olivia and proposed to Chloe himself, offering her one of a pair of matching rings he forged in art class. “I got it all straightened out,” he announced after school, over cookies and milk. May it always be so easy, love.

December 2010 - First Winter

Winter started coyly, as if it was trying to charm us into embracing the cold. The first snow of the year fell on Halloween. This melted quickly and we didn’t see snow again until Thanksgiving day, at my parents’ place in Ithaca. I started to think God was teasing us by playing to the American holiday schedule, and it reminded me of a childhood mystery – the only time I ever saw snow flakes fall on my home town in San Diego was on a Valentine’s day.

The kids’ first reaction to the snow was to eat as much of it as possible. One big white snow cone!! It took them a few times to realize that despite looking pure white, snow from the car’s bumper or the ground near the chicken coop were not the tasty-est freeze.

There we were, waltzing our way through the season and wondering how Maine got its reputation for harsh winters when a storm came and dumped several feet. Jonah rejoiced at his first cancelled school day, and the kids spent the day home watching movies (what else to do when you still need to work?). Apparently Nora the noravirus doesn’t care about school cancellations or lost days of work, since she decided to visit us the very next day. Zach was out on his weekly expedition to Massachusetts, after a night of holding two childrens’ heads over bowls I was groggily shoveling snow off our car and out of the chickens’ run. The path I shoveled from the back door of our trailer to the henhouse looked like a tunnel. Once some ground had been cleared in their run, the chickens decided to venture out. At least they’re smart enough not to step into snow that is taller than they are. One of them was so grateful that she laid an egg right there on the snowy ground. Either they’re not very bright or not very maternal. But why is it that the golf ball we put in their nest boxes to encourage them to lay their eggs there keeps winding up on the opposite corner of the five-foot hen house? It’s heavy, and to get it out of the nest box they have to launch it over a 2” ledge. It’s not as though they have hands to pick the thing up and throw it. There’s only one possible explanation: our chickens know how to golf.

One sign that you’re in a small town is that your kids show up in the newspaper even if they haven’t done anything wrong. We’ve only been here 5 months, and between the two of them our kids’ photos have already been in print 3 times. One is a photo of Zora sitting in a fire engine, quoted as asking the firefighter to “go fast.” The most recent one is a shot of Jonah with his kindergarden teacher, brandishing an award for “courage.” In the photo he has a huge scab over one of his eyes from having slipped on my parents’ stairs and cut his brow. In any case, it goes nicely with the courage award, which he actually received for having moved across the country. Folks here think it’s pretty courageous for a Californian to venture so far North. I think they are wondering if we’re going to “stick,” like these first snows.

I bottled and labeled our first ever batch of hard cider. It’s mellowed a bit now, and tastes a bit like a dry white wine with the scent of apples. I wasn’t sure at first but now quite like it. It may finally be good enough to take over to the folks who sold us the apples. Their last name is French, like so many people here, and I sometimes wish more of the French culture had stuck around. Just a bit north of here in Quebec is an amazing band, Le Vent du Nord, which plays some of the best folk music I’ve ever heard. We saw them at the Bangor folk festival and since then I’ve been hooked on the fiery, melancholy reels of Quebequois music. The French Canadian fiddlers tap with their feet (mat-a-pat, mat-a-pat) as they play, and the round tones of the fiddle carved up with “les pieds” creates such an infectious rhythm that it’s almost impossible to take sitting down. Hence the saying that the way to kill a Quebequois is to tie his feet to the chair and play fiddle music at him.

Zach is working furiously at his new job, in the midst of the end-of-the year crunch for spend-it-or-lose-it grant funding. I have been keeping busy working on a database, and just finished driving down to Boston to present the first draft. In November we surprised my parents at their retirement from Cornell Biology, sneaking up the night before and staying at aunt Wendy’s place. The little powerpoint presentation I did on my parents as a species went over so well that I was invited to do it again the next night at the Lab of Ornithology’s board meeting, where my mother was also being congratulated on her retirement. The board is fortunate to have many luminaries, including Hank Paulson (the former treasury secretary), the former chair of BP, and heads of major foundations. So now to add to the list of odd things I have done recently I can add: conducting a presentation attended by a (former) US treasury secretary. He even laughed at my sex jokes.

We’re digging in now and will be home for the holidays. Zach’s mother Patty has baked about six different kinds of cookies and more are on the way, as well as my parents’ own Christmas bread. Between that, Winter Lager, and our homemade toffee, I hope we’ll put on enough padding to help us through the next several months of relentless cold and deep snow, which I hear will not start melting until April. What started as flirtation is about to turn into a committed relationship – the winter is going to stick, for a long time. At least the days will start getting longer soon! Look for the eclipse of the moon that is supposed to take place the evening of the solstice.

At Home in Lincoln

We’ve settled into Lincoln happily – so much that it will be hard to leave, when the time comes. Every morning now we walk Jonah down the driveway to wait for the school bus. The grass is still green, and looks like powdered mint in the morning frost. The trees are blazing red, orange, and yellow, scuttling their leaves across Sweet Road on the way to drop off Zora. Both kids have great teachers and are happy in school. I drive home to work as the sun starts filling the valley.

The weather changed suddenly. In early September we had to run the fans, and just two weeks later we were turning on the heater. The first week of Jonah’s new life as a kindergardener, he came home and jumped in the lake. Now the lake is too cold for swimming, but it’s still warm enough to fish from the canoe. The only kind of fish out there that seems to want Jonah’s worms are large toothy pickerill – the last one was 16”. They’re probably full of mercury, but what they hey, we fry them up in flour with curry powder and just try not to take Jonah fishing too often.

Earlier this summer, Jack and Pat sailed up to Canada in Alisande and we met them at Eastport, the easternmost town in the U.S. It was a beautiful old town, preserved through neglect and now full of artists. The mackerel were running in the harbor and kids just a little older than Jonah were pulling out lines with five or more fish hooked on at a time. Jonah befriended a boy who was more than happy to share his catch, so I cleaned the fish and we cooked and ate them on board. In town, I found a store that sold handmade things. I bought a box of “Needhams” candy and two dolls (one for Zora and one for her cousin Easnadh) that had been rescued from goodwill and outfitted with custom-knitted dresses. The cost of the dolls could never have covered the work that went into the knitting, so I imagine the artist as a saintly rescuer of abandoned lovies, someone who still gets misty-eyed when she hears “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

Time is valued differently here. Goods all cost the same – or more – as they did in the Bay Area, but anything that requires human time is much less. The best haircutter in town (who is actually quite good) charges $16 and is amazed if you pay her $20. Zora’s Montessori, also the most expensive in town and the sort of nurturing and politically correct place that would cost at least $1500 per month in the Bay, only charges $450. For now we are quite lucky to have been able to hang on to employment from outside the state, but I am sure that if we had to find jobs in Maine we would struggle. Many people work multiple jobs. It’s not uncommon to see a sign that reads something like: “Small Engine Repair and Fresh Baked Pies.”

People who find out we’re from California like to tease me that I’ll never make it through the winter. I’ve learned that the best retort is to tease them back that I know how they do it – it’s that Allen Coffee Brandy. Every drugstore and grocery store in Maine seems to have about a fifth of the liquor aisle dedicated to variously sized bottles of Allen Coffee Brandy (also known as “Fat Ass in a Glass”). I figure since we’re already living in a trailer, I might as well start working on a double-wide. But I haven’t bought any Allen’s yet. I can’t sleep at night if I drink caffeine after noon, so until I’m cold enough to start drinking at 10am, it’s no use to me. Instead, we are working on fermenting three gallons of apple cider that we squeezed with a borrowed cider press. The apples came from a local orchard that agreed to discount the “drops” we harvested from the ground. The kids enjoyed using the press and collecting fresh cider from its spout, but after grinding and pressing 8 bushels I felt like I never wanted to see another apple. Zach and Jonah had the slightly less arduous task of slicing apples for the dehydrator, with which they made yummy apple chips. And Zach’s mother made wonderful applesauce, enough to last until the next apple harvest.

We ate out of the garden all summer. It was neat to be here when everything came out of the ground and had to be processed. Zach’s mother made pickled “dilly” beans, pickled beets, relish, spiced grape jam from the concord grapes near the driveway, and we had several apple cakes and crisps from the crabby little apples in the front. On a trip to Machias we obtained a 10-pound box of blueberries for the freezer. Now we are just waiting for our cider to ferment and our 5 new Australorp pullets to start laying eggs. They are lovely black chickens, green and blue iridescent in the sun. I love to sit on the lawn with my coffee in the morning listening to them cluck.

Zach built the chicken house and run while he was waiting to hear about his job with Fat Spaniel. It was a good outlet for the anxiety, something concrete and productive to focus on. He had been working with Fat Spaniel for seven years, was one of the first employees, and we were heavily invested there – but as often happens with start-ups, it was bought by another company and our stocks never came to anything. It would have been devastating news to receive in the Bay, but here, in this timeless place, it’s just a failed harvest. The bad news was followed up by a great offer from another company down in Massachusetts. Zach is now the new Director of Measurement and Monitoring for American Capital Energy, a high-end company that carries out about 20% of the country’s major solar installations. They are willing to let him work in the office just 2 days a week for now (and 3 from home), which will let us keep the kids in school and gives us time to look for a place of our own in southern Maine.

I have just finished drafting two evaluation reports for the organization I contracted with in April. It was a great experience and they were happy enough with my work to ask me to evaluate the same two projects next year, this time on a prospective basis. I may also have a chance to help them re-design the database they use to gather data about their various initiatives. Exciting, fun, and challenging work with great people, and it will continue to give me the flexibility to work from some so I can be here when Jonah bursts into the house and wants to tell us about his day.

Jonah turned five this month. I planned a “Rock Party” for him and gave him an invitation to offer to a friend he’d met on the bus. She refused the invitation, so I thought the party idea was dead in the water and started planning a trip to Western Maine to tour a mine (something Jonah had been asking to do all year). The next week Jonah took out the invitation and offered it to someone in his class – everyone crowded around, saying they wanted to come too. At that point we were committed to invite the whole class. Zach and his family were apprehensive (the last party they threw, in Taos, ended up in tears) but it went off beautifully, particularly the mine shaft in the basement that led to a bucket of dirt filled with treasures. We had a good mix of cousins and classmates (not too many), and a tasty lemon cake with candy “rocks.” Jonah had a blast and parents wrote me afterwards to let me know what a nice time they’d had. Whew – one down. We were still committed to the mine tour I had reserved, so we did that last weekend. Jack and Pat came along and helped entertain Zora while Zach, Jonah and I went into the mines. Everyone got to dig in the tailings, where we found feldspar, mica, quartz, and even some rough-grade aquamarine and garnet. We had a beautiful drive home along route 2, which is sort of a Northern Route 66, running West to the Pacific coast and East right past Sweet Road where we currently abide.

After much transition we have found a new path forward. It’s nice to finally have some time to write. I am looking out the bedroom of our trailer at a broad green lawn, trees with gold and russet leaves, and a garden that is turning back into the earth. Standing in the corner of our room are four birch branches, the huppah poles from our wedding. They came off this property in ‘02, travelled all the way to Boonville, sat in the dark 5 years at our storage unit in Berkeley and now are just a few meters from where they grew.

Orienting North East

I’ve spent the past two weeks spinning a bit. Who are we now? What are our new priorities, and how do we fit them in to a pattern of living? At least that pattern – a daily and weekly routine - is now starting to take shape. Zach used to always leave before dawn; now he helps the kids get ready in the morning and even sometimes has a chance to read to or play with them before they head to school, while I am making their lunch and cleaning up from breakfast. Right now I am doing both the pick-up and drop-off since my schedule is more flexible. The kids get out at 4, and Zach has to work till 5, so I can spend the extra hour taking the kids to the lake or doing errands in town. On Thursdays I have the whole day with the kids. Jack is retired, so yesterday (our most recent Thursday) he took us on a hike up to the top of a hill that was covered in wild low-bush blueberries. The berries are small but intensely flavored, and when you tickle the leaves they fall right into your hand. The road to the blueberry stand is lined with raspberries and blackberries. We gathered as many as we could of all three, hoping for pie, but only amassed enough for generous toppings on ice cream.

We asked Jonah the other day whether he liked living on a boat or living in a house. He thought for a moment, then like a good politician framed his answer in terms of the question he thought we should have asked. “I like this place,” he told us. Then, “It’s different here.” He couldn’t specify what was different, exactly. Probably more things than he could list. I wondered if he is aware of the cultural differences; the relaxed, straightforward, old-fashioned sensibility of the townsfolk here. But both kids seem to be happy and responding well. Upon meeting his Montessori teacher for the first time, Jonah spontaneously and enthusiastically hugged her. This wasn’t even after they had spent time together – it was an immediate connection, and such an unusual response for him that I was completely surprised.

Zora has grown up quite a bit over the last 1 ½ months. She’s now running at full speed, talking up a storm, and asking questions that start with “why?” A recent exchange:

“Time to get dressed, Zora.”

“No!” She wails and bolts, then pauses, pointing at a picture of a monkey on the floor. “Monkey no clothes.” She looks up earnestly, trying to make sure I understand her point. “Why monkey no clothes?”

In Bangor, after shopping for a sofa, we ate at a restaurant that has a robotic talking moose over the bar. The kids loved it, but Zora was stumped. “Why moose talking?” she asked while the moose was telling us about the “avalanche of flavor” we were about to experience. Then, when the moose went into his 10-minute shut-down mode, she tugged on me again. “Why moose no talking?”

Zora seems to love the Montessori, where she has lots of new “babies” to play with (both plastic and real). Every time I pick her up she looks tired, happy, and her shoes are drenched from water play. For both kids, four full days a week, this costs less than half what we paid in the Bay. Jonah will get to enjoy the worm-digging, teepee-building and butterfly-hatching for one more month before he starts kindergarden. I went to enroll him at the town superintendent’s office yesterday, which is located on the ground floor of the Masonic Temple. I thought I was late signing him up (shopping around for kindergardens in Berkeley starts in January, and the lottery is in the spring), but they told me I was too early. I need to go directly to the school, just two weeks before school starts, and they’ll take care of it then. The receptionist at the office (Lisa) who explained this to me is the daughter-in-law of the hospital’s ultrasound technician, Karen. Karen is also the person who cleans the local hospital and Jack and Pat’s house – and who is scheduled to clean our trailer’s carpet *sometime* so we can start moving in. Lisa lives across the street from her mother-in-law, so I asked her to ask Karen when she plans to clean the carpet. It would be nice to know when she is coming, so we can either set aside the weekend to move in or take off and go sailing. I realize now this was pushy of me to ask, and in combination with the school sign-up, it became clear that I need to slow down to the pace of Maine. Karen will come when she can, and we should just plan to go sailing.

Arrival in Maine

We left Boston, last northern edifice of civilization and of jobs, heading towards our future home in a state that has been called both “Vacationland” and “a god-forsaken, fly-infested country” (Annie Proulx). The kids were asleep but we couldn’t help but let out a cheer as we crossed the border and saw the welcome sign, which reads: “Maine - The Way Life Should Be.” I felt an ache in my chest and suppressed an urge to cry, it had taken us so much to get here. Years of dreaming and planning and postponing, coming to visit and hating to leave, working on the boat so that it would sell, holding on with our teeth through the process of selling, then packing, cutting ties, driving so far. We had made it all this way, one step and one mile at a time. We wondered if this place would be kind to us. And we wondered if the luck that had brought us to this point was self-made, pure luck, or fate. You never can look far enough down the road to know for sure whether something can be called good or bad, but it does feel good, if even for a moment, to believe you can control your destiny by choosing your place on the map and getting there.

Arriving in the countryside of Northern Maine in summer is like being heralded with a blast of angel trumpets. Golden sun and swaying leafy green trees. Warm country roads lined with cicadas and singing birds. As we rolled up to the home of Zach’s parents, I opened the double doors in their wooden fence and we drove into the front yard. Jack and Pat walked out to meet us, quietly grinning, followed by Rachel, Aaron, Gryphon, and Nikita (the dog). We stood with the Nobels’ welcome party in the yard for a long time, hugging and talking. Then we went inside and gave everyone a taste of California - Madera figs and Humboldt Fog cheese – we had transported from Ithaca.

Whereas our two weeks Ithaca passed by in a flash, our first week in Maine was so long that by the end we felt like we had been here for at least a month. Sorting through the pile of bills forwarded from Berkeley, trying to figure out how to make the trailer liveable, trying to memorize the names of our new townsfolk, starting the kids in Montessori our 3^rd day after arrival. But we also began enjoying ourselves right away, running around in the huge green yard, eating out of the garden, swimming in the lake, pushing the kids in a swing in the barn, and enjoying Meme’s endless supply and variety of cookies. In the evenings, we share meals with Zach’s parents, and with Laura and Rachel’s families each weekend. The kids are off and running with their rediscovered cousins and the family is restructuring itself into one large, layered unit. This big house has expands to fit however many children come to play or sleep under its eaves. The barn has expanded to fit the uhaul truck full of boxes Zach ferried up from Portland on Friday. And Jack and Pat have made room for us in their lives, inviting us to stay as long as we need. Like their house, generous and expansive.

Up the road is a farm and horse ranch. I inquired there about lessons and began my first yesterday. It had been at least 17 years but the muscle memory was still there, if a little rusty. Jonah got a chance to do a short ride; if he expresses interest, I may give him a few more, though it will be a long time before he’ll be able to control the horse on his own. After work, Zach and Jonah went out in the canoe and returned with a 13” fish for dinner. This morning, with the kids in school, Zach and I went running. All in all, it’s every bit the healthier and more active country life we had imagined. When we breathe in, there’s no trace of smog. The water is plentiful and tastes wonderful. There’s no commute to work (for now). And with the grandparents around nightly and even more family on weekends, Rachel can slip away for a swim, I can slip out into the yard to fiddle under the trees, or Aaron can take some time for himself on the computer. Someone is always around to keep an eye on the kids.

Ithaca

My sister Katrina was born on the 4^th of July. I remember being 4 years old, watching our neighbors’ fireworks from the safety of my grandma’s lap, and thinking it perfectly natural that the whole country was celebrating her arrival. This year, Katrina arrived on the 6^th, so we saved most of the stockpile of explosives we had purchased from “Uncle Zack’s Fireworks” in West Virginia to blow up in her presence. First we lit glow worms, which spouted black snakes of ash. We escalated to snapping poppers on the ground, waved around sparklers, then went up to the driveway to light a succession of rockets and fountains. We had never bought fireworks before, so when the thing that was described as a spinning fountain took off into the air screaming and exploded, shooting arrows of sparks, we were all a little surprised. Finally we worked up our courage to set off a big ball over the pond. It was shockingly large and we all held our breath as its sparks cleared the trees. So there you go Katrina. A great big birthday candle.

The rest of the TNT crackers were used to shoot homemade tin can rockets up into the air. After several experiments the boys (my father, Zach, and Jonah, who all behaved about the same age with regards to this activity) got the can 20 feet above the top of the three-story house.

We stayed on the basement floor, which gave the kids a place to make messy projects and to nap. During the day Zach and I headed up to the top floor to work while my parents and Katrina generously entertained the kids. They walked in the forest, swam in the pond, searched for bullfrogs, and read books. Throughout the day, various animals made their appearances – songbirds, woodpeckers, chipmunks, deer, rabbits, and Mabel the turkey. At 5, when Zach and I were done working, we all went swimming in the pond together. Then my parents would pass out margaritas and serve something wonderful from the barbeque. Uncle Joel and Aunt Diane came to stay for a little while and we took the opportunity to have a little hootenanny, with Joel on the banjo and Jeff on dobro. When night came fireflies filled the ground and the sky, sometimes streaking like shooting starts. The stars were so clear, and the fireflies so many, it was sometimes hard to tell which was which.

On our last weekend we went wine-tasting. We hit our favorite spot and also some new ones, including a distillery that made the most aromatic gin and where we bought a small bottle of sour cherry liqueur. Since the kids couldn’t taste the wine they went “cracker tasting.” Jonah had a little scorecard where he described and rated the crackers at each winery. Lamoreaux, where we bought the most wine, scored lowest on crackers. But the place where they passed out popsicles was off the charts.

Two weeks in Ithaca flew by. On our last morning we met the three sweet sons of my sister’s boyfriend Pablo. They were staying the night, so we had to clear out of the basement, and in any case it was time for us to be moving on. We packed everything up quickly like expert gypsies, leaving only our footsteps, and sailed off in the red land yacht for Boston. Phyllis and Ken were doing real sailing in Maine, but they had left us the key to their gracious old brownstone. After a nice evening on the porch talking with Carmen and her boyfriend Greg, we joined the kids for sleep on the haunted 3^rd floor.