2024 Life Logs, Day 361: From Maine to New Hampshire to Home on Cape Cod
Date: Friday, December 27, 2024
Weather: Sunny; Temp 30, Low 33 degrees F in Falmouth
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Today I drove from Boothbay, Maine, to Exeter, New Hampshire, to visit with Peppe Christianson. Peppe, who lives on an island near Seattle, Washington, is visiting with her sister who is undergoing cancer treatment. Peppe just lost her husband Bob in November, so I really wanted to visit with her to give her hug, even though we knew the visit would be too short. We met for lunch and then I traveled on. I got home at 4:30 pm, just in time to play outside with Shadow in the light of the setting sun. As always, it feels great to be home, but I did have a wonderful holiday in Maine. I have spent my evening writing a Facebook post covering Thanksgiving to Christmas. I’m copying that here as my holiday summary.
Happy Holidays to all! My holiday began at Thanksgiving, so this is going to be a long post. I flew to Puerto Rico to spend Thanksgiving with my son Justin and his family and after Thanksgiving, we went to get a Christmas tree and decorate it so I could be a part of their Christmas festivities. When I returned from Puerto Rico, I decorated my tree and watched as Heather and family decorated theirs. Then there was the Falmouth Christmas Parade.
Fast forward to today. I just returned from a Christmas and Chanukah holiday that began last Sunday in Cambridge. Along with my daughter Heather, her family, and members of Jed’s family, we celebrated Solstice and welcomed the Yule at the Midwinter Revels at Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre. After the matinee performance, we did last minute Christmas shopping in Harvard Square and had a wonderful Indian dinner at The Maharaja. On Monday, it was off to Boothbay, Maine, for Christmas at the Goldstone/Welch family farm. The next day, Christmas Eve, we awoke to a world of white with snow still coming down as we listened to A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols service from King’s College in Cambridge, England, a long-time family tradition. There was a late afternoon walk down to the water which was just spectacular and then the traditional Goldstone oyster stew for dinner. On Christmas morning, it was fitting that the youngest member of the family, Ollie, was the first upstairs on Christmas morning. And as we checked out our stockings, we listened to John Stegeman’s reading of The Night Before Christmas on WCAI in Woods Hole. John was Heather’s advisor when she first came to Woods Hole in the late 1990’s as part of the Woods Hole/MIT Joint Program and now Jed works in John’s lab at WHOI. Over the many years, John has become a close family friend and on children’s stories on the radio. What a special Christmas morning treat.
We opened presents for hours, enjoyed Heather’s traditional monkey bread, went caroling down at the farmhouse, and ended our Christmas Day with the lighting of the first menorah candle of Chanukah before dinner. Four of five times in the last century, Christmas Day and the first night of Chanukah have happened on the same day.
On Boxing Day evening, Heather, Toby’s (Jed’s brother) significant other, Stephanie, and I went to see the light display at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. There was an “enchanting” forest with bigger than life wooden trolls that live there year-round. And for the holiday display, there were mushrooms, wild animals, and shooting stars, fields of flowers, marine and freshwater animals, birds, and more … all made of thousands of Christmas lights. And now I am back at home in Falmouth. What a wonderful month-long holiday I have enjoyed. However you celebrate, I hope your holiday was as wonderful as mine.
