2021 Life Logs, Day 177: Birthday Celebration for Jonah; Celebration of Life for Lynn
Date: Saturday, June 26, 2021
Weather: Cloudy; High 79, Low 68 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
06 Bubba, Now Jonah, Day Two
07 Opening More Presents
Happy Birthday to Jonah! Twelve years ago, Mark and I flew home from Malaysia for the birth of two grandchildren. Ziggy was born in New Mexico in April, so that was our first stop. Then we flew to Cape Cod to await the birth of Jonah on June 26, 2009. Because of our sailing schedule, we were able to stay for three months after his birth, but then we didn’t get to see him again until we arrived home on Windbird just two days before his second birthday. When he was born, Jonah was long and thin, had dark hair, and incredibly long and expressive little fingers. But when we returned from our trip around the world, we found a chubby, curly blonde-headed little boy. Now Jonah has what I call BIG hair. It has become his unique personal signature. I loved this year’s birthday picture of him with Shadow who has more curly black hair than any dog ever needed! They make a striking pair.
On this birthday, I could not be here for Jonah’s party as I was driving back to northern Massachusetts for a celebration of a very different kind. Family and friends were gathering at 1 pm at the Tewkesbury Country Club to celebrate the life of my niece that died in October. So, I started my morning at the Goldstones where Jed and Sam assembled my birthday present to Jonah—a trampoline. We stopped halfway through to have a birthday breakfast as I had a two hour drive and needed to leave. Before I had to leave, Jonah got to see the assembled trampoline without the side screening in place and he opened his other presents. Later in the afternoon three friends came over and they played lawn games and spent a lot of time on the trampoline. Two of the friends got him the same gift—a beach ball sized soccer ball that was perfect for play in the trampoline enclosure. And getting two was perfect as he can use one at the beach and one on the trampoline.
When I got back from Tewkesbury, Heather and Sam had gone to my house to get Shadow and I met them all back at Heather and Jed’s for a birthday dinner. During Jonah’s party while the boys were jumping on the trampoline, Heather and Jed cut back bushes to clear a permanent area for the trampoline. We had done the measuring of the location for the trampoline back in March before things started to grow. When I looked yesterday morning, my heart sunk as I saw there was no way the trampoline was going to fit there. So, we set it up temporarily in the yard. I figured it would take the next few weeks to clear the area. But tired as they were from the late last night, Heather and Jed did most of the clearing during the party when the boys were playing on the trampoline. And still after dinner Jed found the energy to ride bikes with Jonah and Ollie to see the last hour or so of a Commodore’s baseball game. The field is so close that you can hear the announcer from Heather and Jed’s deck once in a while. Hearing that little bit while we were eating dinner on the deck convinced Jonah that he just had to go SEE the game. I headed home and Heather and Sam crashed. But Jonah had a great birthday from morning to night.
The Celebration of Life for Lynn Denise Martin was just what Lynn would have wanted. It was a wonderful gathering of family and friends. Lynn was the first grandchild for my parents, and Lynn’s parents, my brother and his wife, lived in the same town. I was seven and had just completed first grade when she was born, so I felt more like her sister than her aunt. In fact, she always refused to call me aunt once she was an adult. But when Lynn was only ten, my brother Bennie died at the age of 33. My brother’s wife, Sue, was from the Boston area, and she moved back home with her three children. But my entire family kept in close contact with Sue and the three children over the years and as adults Lynn and I reconnected. Today there were lifelong high school friends of hers in attendance, some I haven’t seen since the 1970’s. Lynn came to spend a few weeks with me in Cleveland, Ohio, in the summer of 1972 and four of those friends made a road trip to Cleveland and crashed at my apartment. It was fun to reminisce about those days. There was another friend of Lynn’s who spent a week with us on our farm in West Virginia in the early 1980’s. And I got to talk with Gina Vanderloop for the first time in years, a close friend of Lynn’s that I consider a friend of mine as well. Gina follows my blog and I check in on her Facebook page from time to time. She mentioned that grandson of mine with the great hair and I said it was his birthday. She loves Jonah hair!
And it was wonderful to have the afternoon with my other nieces and nephews who were there. Lynn spent her life working to make this world a better place. She spent many years working as the Director of Communications for IPPNW, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. And she was a political activist, not just in name. She always put her personal time and energy into volunteering and marching for causes she believed in. And she also loved the outdoors—hiking, cross country skiing, sitting on the beach and reading.
She managed to get me to go cross country skiing with her, drug me to street corners to hold signs for political candidates, made sure I attended political rallies with her, and Mark and I invited her to fly to Samoa to spend time reading on the beaches with us. Lynn invited me to a special event with Ted Kennedy once and at another event I sat next to Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, at a dinner Lynn had organized. On the night of the 2004 Presidential Campaign, she and I spent the entire evening walking the streets of Boston watching people like Al Franken and David Gergen getting made-up for appearances on MSNBC live from Quincy Market, walking to the hotel where near mid-night John Kerry came out to address the crowd because the election was too close to call but not looking good for him, and then crying all the way back to Charlestown to Windbird . . . special memories that will always be with me.
