My vacation is going very well, thank you. If you have emailed me and I have not responded, I am sorry, but unless it’s urgent it will wait until I get back next Monday.
I have spent the last several days relaxing, swimming in my sister’s pool, and being with my family. Last night (Monday), I made dinner for my mom, my sister Francesca and my niece Mary. (It was a very nice penne rigati with arrabiata (spicy) tomato sauce with roasted red peppers, red onion, and oyster mushrooms. Yum. We had an excellent Barbera wine with it and then chocolate gelati for dessert. Double yum.) Anyway, after dinner we sat on the porch and my mother told us the story of how she met my father and how they dated and eventually got married. Then Francesca told stories of things that happened to her as a young girl. This was all new for Mary, who turns 13 next month, because I don’t think she’d heard any of these stories before.
Some of my favorite memories from my childhood were like this night. When I was a kid, my family vacationed almost exclusively at a small farm in South Hope, Maine, where my mom’s friends Ursula and Carolie lived. We would sit in the farmhouse kitchen after supper, adults around the table and kids around the periphery, and the adults would tell stories about things they had done in their lives. And what interesting lives they had led. Sometimes, friends of the ladies would come over and join in with their stories. I think that was the best part of my education as a young man. You can learn much about who you are from learning who your parents are. And you can learn much about the world from hearing what those who have come before you have seen and done and experienced.
Anyway, I think we made some new lifelong memories for Mary last night. I think she appreciated them greatly, and it may have been a landmark moment in her progression from childhood to adolescence.
