MASSACHUSETTS, Day 1, July 13

Greetings from sunny New England. It was an unearthly hour fit for neither man or beast when I was awakened by my alarm clock at 2:30 a.m. this morning. I bathed, washed my hair, watered the plants, took out the garbage and did all the necessary things to prepare to leave for a week. The shared-ride van was a slight bit late, arriving at 4:20 and picking up three other passengers besides myself, but after picking up the last two, the driver made up for possible lost time by getting us all to the airport quickly. I was the first one off the van at Terminal C, and quickly made my way through the AA line, checking my luggage for free instead of paying $25 for the privilege of checking it. I am not sure why that happened, but it was welcome. A quick saunter through security brought me up to my gate, and the plane left on time, with no incident during flight. I arrived at Boston Logan at approximately 11:00 a.m., got my luggage and called Marthe. Her phone was acting up, and after the second try, I attempted to get in touch with her daughter Sarah, who is staying at Marthe's house. After hanging up with her, I tried Marthe one more time, and this time got through. Soon I saw her, I stowed my luggage, we greeted each other, and she and I stopped on the way out of town at Trader Joe's to get items for lunch. We arrived home at about 1:00, and Sarah was there with the little one, Owen, her now 14-month old son who has grown like a weed and is now walking very well. We had lunch, a fine pasta salad and cucumbers with creme fraiche and trout, all of which Sarah had concocted. I had bought Orangina, cherries for dessert, and a bouquet of irises to celebrate Sarah's newest graduation and her PhD degree. Afterwards, Sarah packed to be able to fly back to Sacramento, CA tomorrow with Owen, while Marthe and I played with him in the water in the garden. A very sweet, extremely bright boy, who is very curious about how things work and who is, for the most part, even-tempered and good natured. For dinner we went to Marthe's boyfriend's house (his name is Josh) for wine and food, which included bruschetta, a Jarlsberg cheese, Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay wines, prosciutto, and ice cream after we had dinner on the veranda and then walked the pier down to a platform overlooking the Essex River basin. The tide had come in, and the water was quite warm. Sarah and Owen took to the water, as did Josh, and we talked and enjoyed each other's company until it grew dark and Owen grew sleepy. We had some great ice creams from the area--maple and chocolate as well as ginger snap ice cream. Scrumptious. And now everyone has gone to bed, as Sarah and Owen are leaving on a 10:30 a.m. flight tomorrow morning. It has been a pleasure to see them once again. More tomorrow! As ever, Sylvia