Sons Three and Four, Beijing Botanical Gardens 2006 

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL

First off, you should know I really loathe that song. But it came to mind as I sat watching my oldest boy teach his college roommate how to swim. You would think that everyone who is 20 years old could swim, but no. Ivan is 6'4"’ of lanky Bulgarian and can’t swim three feet. He has an unpronounceable last name, his English is excellent, and to make his life more complicated, he is taking the next semester abroad, in Scotland, where I understand English hasn’t been spoken for centuries. His girlfriend is the shortest Swede I have ever seen, and with luck, she’ll get up to Scotland to see him before she heads to Mongolia for a few months as part of her year long Watson fellowship to study migration. She’ll be in Mongolia when Martin is in China, and he plans to go visit her when he goes to Ulan Batur to buy several yurts to ship back to the US.
Rachel’s colleague K. is in Bulgaria at the moment, studying something that the Bulgarian government isn’t so hot for her to study, so she’s been having visa problems. She had to go from Bulgaria to Bosnia to the Dominican Republic to Florida to D.C. to receive her visa in person, and then reverse the route. It took about two weeks altogether, and now she is in Bulgaria, where she is still enduring governmental hassles.
The day before yesterday, I was chatting with a neighbor whose work takes him to Suzhou twice a year, and though I have been to several cities nearby, I have not yet actually made it to Suzhou, which I had understood to be a very lovely city, an understanding which he confirmed. Martin came over and I noticed he was wearing a Laotian t-shirt that I didn’t recognize. I said I didn’t remember getting that the last time we were in Laos and he said that a classmate of his had given it to him, because his father had brought it back for him from Laos but it was too small for him. This discussion served to remind us both that we needed to write to our pal in northeast Thailand.
The last time we saw Nick, we took a pal of mine from Beijing into Laos. Unusually among Chinese, she frequently makes the opportunity to got traveling to less than ordinary destinations to take photos. In October, our family and hers will be going to Inner Mongolia for a few days to check out the grasslands, the yurts, the sheep– and take some pictures.
My mother in law is due back from three weeks in Israel today, where she has been helping my sister in law’s family move to a new house. She hasn’t been easy to keep track of the last nine months or so, but neither has her Daughter Number One, who has been to Canada twice, North Carolina, Chicago, and several other places conferring and confabulating about this and that since last August.
And last summer, when she traveled to China for a pair of conferences, one down south and one out west, our friend Dana from Chicago was in Scotland, thinking of France. I don’t understand what it is about Scotland that draws so many people there. We have friends who spent their honeymoon bicycling there, mostly uphill and mostly in the rain, and we have two other friends who are bound and determined to actually get married there. At least this time there has been no talk of bicycles.
Even though it’s mostly just to China, the youngest two boys have worn out their passports, and need to have more pages added. With friends on four continents, when they ask how far it is to such-and-such a place, what they actually mean is how long does it take to get there.
Finally, there is our Ayi, who at 71 is the most-traveled member of her family, here in America for the sixth or seventh time. She’s seen quite a number of places in the US, and has been to several places in Canada as well. Sitting on the porch overlooking Sheepscot Pond, she confesses that she is lucky that she has children and us who can take care of her in what she calls old age. She’s still a ways from old age as far as I can tell– Her oldest siblings are in their 80s and she has another just under. I can’t imagine that as a young girl in Shanghai in the 1930s she ever dreamed that she would be a regular traveler to Maine.
But then again, in the 1960s, as a young boy, I never imagined I’d be a regular traveler to Beijing. Huh.

MAINE MONSOON

We got back from China to find Maine in flood. Luckily for us, the floods were south of us, but still-- flooding in May? Hardly usual. Regardless, to make a long, damp story short, it rained the entire month of May. A new record.
Come June, we figured, alright, enough's enough, surely it would stop. Well, Shirley or not, it didn't. Today's the 15th, and this was the third rain-free day of the month. The grass is higher than the corn-- corn, after all, can't be planted in mud, the grass was already there, and no one has been able to mow the sodden lawns all year.
Meanwhile, the Powers That Be decided, suddenly, after years of dithering, and public comment which was ignored wholesale, to replace the storm drains and sewers and repave our entire street. So, from end to end, the street has been a mudpit for weeks, filled with chuckholes, rocks, piles or dirt and sand, big trucks, earthmovers and steamrollers, which I am sorry to say, no longer seem to use steam-- just very loud mufflerless engines.
If it continues to not rain for any appreciable length of time, we might be able to begin Our Summer, which would be a Good Thing, as the kids are out of school as of noon tomorrow.
Let The Games Begin. Praise The Lord And Pass The Umbrellas...