Family Fun

My sister Barbara. I was devastated when she left for college when I was six. We have since reconciled.

Now, she is once again my envy because she has fabulous grown children who have produced some miraculous beings for Barbara to play with.

Clara, most winsome of girllets, quiet as a dove and twice as sweet. Yet to get that first haircut...

Will, quick, brilliant and sweet as pumpkin pie.

  

Max, who has our Dad's big ol' mouth, pinstriped overalls and tendency to pull things apart and put them back together again, then tell you all about it. He and his brother Will are train guys. I like train guys, and have some experience with them.

Barb mounted an impromptu family reunion at her house, completely surprising me with a huge dose of baby magic, which I sorely needed. 

Nothing like a freshly-scrubbed toddler to set your world right.

We had Adoration of the Babies, which is pretty much how my family spends its time together--watching little kids do their thing.

My nephew Eric and his wife Tera are trying to sell their house while occupying a new one. There's this issue with the buyer of their prior house, who wants a tree on the neighbor's lot cut down before she'll close the deal. It is a story bordering on absurd, but typical of this buyer's home market. Eric and Tera were given a cake to welcome them to their new neighborhood, and brought it along. Barb, Karen and I customized it for them

to gales of laughter.

In Connecticut, I visited my mom, who was very surprised and happy to see me, and landed on sister Micky and her family. We went out running and I kept up, which is saying a whole lot if you know long, lean Micky. We spent Nigel Tufnel Day together, and at precisely 11:11 on 11/11/11, we put Micky's LP of Smell the Glove on the turntable and blasted "Big Bottom." That was good. I was struck by the fact that they have a working turntable; that record sides are amazingly short in this world of continuous music; that I was very thankful to be right there at that moment.

We spent part of a morning doing some handsaw surgery on a big lilac, which I'm sure will rebound well. I can safely say that my sister and her family have the biggest brushpile in Avon, legacy of the Halloween monster snowstorm and the nearly 9 days of power outage that followed.  That's a big brushpile. A foot of wet snow on still-green leaves: not good. They survived it in true pioneer style, living by the fireplace, burning wood they'd cut for the winter. I was really proud of them.

Other fun things: Staying overnight at the Visual Art Center's huge Victorian house with Cindy House. We were not spooked by the clanking radiator pipes, no not one bit. The next morning we went out searching for breakfast and saw this in the doorway of a restaurant:

 We noted the presence of a funeral parlor directly adjacent to the restaurant. We looked at each other and Cindy commented, "Wrong door!"

We were awful.

But the breakfast we found at Canton, Mass's Amber Road Cafe was not awful. It was spectacular.

Cindy opted for French toast smothered in fruit; I went for corned beef hash with garlic-rosemary toast. Mmmmmmm.

The whole trip was like that meal: colorful, fun, rich, delicious, satisfying, put together with love. I'm feeling very blessed to have my wonderful friends and family, and to know my new friends at the Visual Arts Center. Thanks to everyone for lighting up my life. Like The Terminator, I Will Be Baaack.