2022 Life Logs, Day 128: Happy Mother’s Day
Date: Sunday, May 8, 2022
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Very Windy; High 53, Low 43 F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers, but most especially to my daughter Heather and my daughter-in-law Jo. Not only are they my daughters, they are the mothers of my fabulous grandchildren. I talked to Justin today and he assured me Jo was having a great Mother’s Day. And I was with Heather today and I know ‘she, me, and we’, all had a wonderful day.
Just after 8 am this morning, Heather, Jed, Sam, Jonah, Ollie, and I headed to Cambridge. Our first stop was Harvard’s Museum of Natural History. The street parking was free on Sunday, the museum was free until noon, and it was a sunny day. What more could one ask for? Warmth!!! The wind was blowing a steady 20 miles an hour from the northeast, and even with the sun, it was chilly. It was a perfect morning for wandering through a museum.
We started our exploration of the museum in the earth and planetary science gallery that is filled with rare rock and mineral specimens. It was difficult to find a favorite as all the specimens were so interesting, but all of us were taken with a large fossilized ammonite shell.
Now extinct, ammonite shells looked like nautilus shells, but are thought to have been more closely related to squids, octopuses, and cuttlefishes. Evidently during fossilization, this ammonite shell was “chemically transformed into an iridescent material called ammolite, which is aragonite.” It was spectacular.
Next, we visited the glass flowers exhibition. From 1886 to 1936, a father and son team from Czechoslovakia produced 4,300 glass models representing 780 plant species. The plants look so real that it is hard to believe they are made of glass.
Heather loved the banana blossom.
Ollie was trying to find all the items listed in a museum scavenger hunt. One of those items was listed as a ‘piranha’ plant which was a Malayan pitcher plant.
Again, spectacular.
By this time, Sam was chomping at the bit to go see what he called the dead animal exhibits. There are fossils of animals, stuffed life-sized animals, sea creatures, forest creatures, animals from all around the world, beetles, birds . . . all creatures great and small. Jonah loved the huge python while Sam was partial to the tigers.
Heather loved a painting of deep-sea tube worms and Ollie loved it all.
Jed particularly loved the sea creatures done in glass.
Years before the Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka were commissioned by Harvard to make the now famous Glass Flowers, they had made lifelike models of marine animals and many of those are on display in the museum. I fell in love with the little curly octopus done in glass.
Each of us truly enjoyed the museum visit, but as noon approached, we knew we had to move on. Sam had a soccer game at 1:30 pm in Cambridge but needed to be there by 12:45 pm for warm-up. And we were all in need of lunch. Jed found a bakery with sandwiches close to the field, and it was a great find. Each of us got something different, and each of us loved our choice. Sam ate on the way to the soccer field, but the rest of us had a little picnic beside the fields. The two teams were well matched, and both played a good game which ended in a 1-1 tie. As Heather noted, there was just enough drama to make it an exciting game to watch. And Sam played one of the best games I have seen him play.
We were all freezing by the time the game ended, so we went on a search for coffee and hot chocolate before heading back to the Cape. We also made a stop at IKEA and picked up Cambodian take-out for dinner at Stir Crazy.
All in all, I was away from home for twelve hours today. I would never have left Shadow that long, but it was made possible due to the help of good friends Karen and Peter Baranowski. Peter has Covid, but is on the mend, so last night I sent a text to Karen asking her if she could come over and take Shadow out for a pee break mid-day today. I did not know that she had tested positive for Covid yesterday until this morning. When I found out, I sent another text telling her that under no circumstances was she to come over to deal with Shadow. But, of course, she and Peter came anyway and that allowed us to stay take our time coming home. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Peter and Karen.
