2018 Life Logs, Day 214—A Summer Day of Swimming and Playing
Date: Thursday, August 2, 2018
Weather: Sunny and Windy; High 80, Low 73 F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Today was all about kids spending a summer day swimming and playing with friends. The day was not planned. We just let it evolve. First, we went to swim lessons and found that it was REALLY windy.
That means lots of waves, so Jonah, Sam, and Jude, the grandson of my next door neighbors, spent a lot of time riding those waves.
It was a bit rough for Ollie, but when he went out with his swim instructor, he had a great time. It is such a joy for me to see kids enjoying their summer days. We left the beach at noon, but through a series of texts, we made arrangements for Sam to spend the afternoon with friends Cole and Leo at their house while Jonah and Ollie came home with me to play with Jude, the nine-year old grandson of my neighbors. Later in the afternoon, Jonah, Ollie, and I went to the Farmer’s Market while Sam stayed home alone to enjoy some quiet time to himself. It was a relaxed summer day enjoyed by all of us. The only negative was that the brakes on my car started making a horrible metal scraping sound. Heather and Jed have loaned me their van for tomorrow and I was able to get an appointment to have the brakes fixed.
“Tucked between two high-rise condominiums, about 50 boats bob lazily at Pier 3 marina on the Delaware River. About 20 of them are also homes to their captains, who head out to work as scientists, professors, salespeople, or students each morning and return to the vessel each night.” This is the intro to an article published today in the Philadelphia Inquirer
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/real_estate/pier-3-marina-waterfront-delaware-river-morgans-pier-20180802.html?mobi=true
and one of the 20 boats belongs to my dear friends Claire McKellar
and Kevin Russell who now live at Pier 3 on their 34-foot 1989 Catalina named Merganser.
Mark and I first met Kevin and Claire when they lived aboard Merganser in the Boston Harbor. Claire was a graduate student at Harvard Medical and she and Kevin had been living in Brookline. One day she joked with Kevin that they should do something in their lives that wasn’t just working 18 hours a day. She says she was just kidding, but when she said to Kevin, “We could just give up our apartment and live on a boat,” he loved the idea and they lived aboard in Boston for the next four years. Since 2007, they have been living on land in Virginia and enjoying the boat on weekends. But this spring Claire’s work as a neuroscientist took her to Princeton in New Jersey and they made the decision move Merganser from the Chesapeake Bay to Philadelphia so they could once again live aboard.
I can’t wait to go visit with them!
