Your intrepid reporter has been quiet the last two weeks -- but has been gathering blog fodder all the while! I've been visiting my parents in Massachusetts and, along with helping them out with some projects, have taken some great side trips. One was to the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, MA, a beautiful building on equally beautiful land, which provided inspiration to author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The inn's menu tells the story: "Suffering writer's block after the loss of his wife, Henry Longfellow made a special visit to the old tavern in 1862 hoping it might ease the pain. Indeed, the quaint charm of this ancient place so pleased and inspired Longfellow that he took up writing again and created his beloved 'Tales of a Wayside Inn.' After the publication of the book, the tavern became known as the Wayside Inn."

The inn, according to the website, has "served the public for 290 years" and "is the oldest operating Inn" on "one of the oldest commissioned roads in the United States."





I dropped in for lunch in their cozy dining room.



Here was the peaceful view I had from the window next to my table.



The light lunch I ordered was wonderfully tasty: creamy New England clam chowder, a "Jerusha Peach Mold (with pineapple and whipped cream dressing)" -- something I have never seen elsewhere but now wish every restaurant served! -- and a bottle of the inn's own root beer.



I did not drink of anything in the tavern below but its Colonial charm. Longfellow's Wayside Inn really is a don't-miss stop if you are in the Boston area!



[My next post will be about some fascinating little-known stops you can make, within minutes of the Wayside Inn! Don't miss it.]

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
-- Anais Nin.

Armed now with a camera with a decent zoom, I have started taking bird pictures. The experiment has had only spotty success -- for every fair bird I've snapped, I've had nine other shots involving half-birds, blurry birds and birds that flew away as I squeezed the shutter.

So the other day at Mill Grove, I was strolling on the grounds when I was pleased to look up and see an occupied birdhouse! Out came my Canon.

I stopped as I neared the house's base, and I pointed the camera upward, zooming until my nearsighted eyes could (as closely as possible in the sun) determine that there were two birds outside the house and they hadn't moved yet. Exciting! I snapped off a quick photo and was quite proud of myself.

Then I noticed that the birds STILL hadn't moved. These were either very cooperative birds, or...

Uh-oh.

That night, my 17-year-old son, being of better vision and brighter mind than his mother, took one look at the photo and said, "Mom. They have no eyeballs."

Sigh... Just call me a birdbrain!

It was a sunny, sultry Sunday, but the many joys I discovered at Chanticleer made the trip worthwhile. Chanticleer, the former Main Line estate of Christine and Adolph Rosengarten Sr. in Wayne, PA, calls itself "a pleasure garden," and it is. There are charms here for all ages. Join me for a stroll...

Jenkins Arboretum in Devon, PA, has just reopened, so I went for a pre-supper saunter. Many buds have not yet opened, but even the hints of the spring glories to come are dazzling!

When it's a 70-degree spring day that looks like this, how can you say no? Housework took an immediate back seat to a walk in the park -- in this case, Valley Forge, which fortunately is just 20 minutes from my house.


Being Valley Forge, one is never sure what ghosts from our Revolutionary past will appear...


One thing's for sure: General Washington never rode to inspect his troops on this!


A new recruit is hard at work...


Whether they were walking, jogging, biking or flying kites, folks of all ages were savoring a day off!

“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.”
-- Erich Fromm (1900-1980).

"I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think."
-- attributed to Rumi.

“It's spring fever.... You don't quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”
-- Mark Twain.

Once upon a time, there was a college student who was fascinated by family history. On weekends, she would leave her campus in Boston and take the streetcar to visit her grandmother at her nearby apartment. Along with enjoying plenty of chatting and snacking, this student would ask her grandmother to pull out the old family photo albums and then would write down all the names, places and events her grandmother told her about those pictures.

It was a great idea -- except the student didn't know until about fifteen years later that there was another album her grandmother had never told her about. An album with pictures going back to around 1910 or earlier.

Pictures like the one above. Photos glued tightly in a construction-paper album. Photos not labeled at all.

It's moments like this that make family historians tear their hair out.

By the time I happened upon this gem, my grandmother was deep in her 90s, in a retirement home and nearly blind. Her sister was dead.

Who were these people in the photos? By comparing them to family portraits that were labeled, I can hazard a couple of fair guesses -- for instance, I believe the man at the wheel was my great-grandfather Burnett Lewis (1865-1917) and the woman with the white head covering (without the big bow) was my great-grandmother Ellyn (Cranitch) Lewis (1867-1949). I could also see tantalizing family resemblances that make me suspect that others in the pictures are siblings and other relatives of my great-grandfather, but oh, how wonderful it would be to KNOW.

Perhaps my great-grandfather thought he would get around to labeling the pictures in his old age, but then he died the day after he turned 52.

I look at the photo below, which I believe shows Ellyn and Burnett with their children, Edith (my great-aunt, 1903-1995) and her older sister -- my grandmother, Marion (1899-1999). Then I look at the two pictures below that, and while I can make a possible case for my grandmother being in the back seat of both of them, I am not at all sure the girl in the front is Aunt Edith.







The lesson here is clear and doesn't need to be spelled out, but I'll do it anyway in the interest of posterity:

* If you have older relatives, connect with them TODAY and make sure all their pictures get labeled (full names, dates, places, events), even if you have to sit with them and do the writing yourself!

* Label your own pictures!

Let's not let our family history die with us.

Late one night, I breathed deep the fragrance of a single yellow rose. And as I held it close and twirled it in my fingers, I found myself fascinated by the play of lamplight and shadow on its folds. The images were strangely sensuous, reminding me of Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings.

The saying, "Take time to smell the roses," has become a cliche, which is a shame -- because the scent, and sight, are wondrous.

Treat yourself today, and think about what you can encourage to be flowering in you.

Less than a week after paying tribute to one grandmother, I remember the loss of the other, who died March 10, 1978.

She had a wonderful flower garden and she created dried flower arrangements in whatever she had handy, including seashells or cosmetic jars, as befits the practical New England housewife she was. Grandma's death came when I was in high school, so I missed out on spending time with her in my adult years, but there was something in me even then that loved seeing she had a spark of the artist in her. I got permission to keep a shoebox full of her dried flower art, along with a couple of arrangements that had been framed. As the years go by, some of the flowers crumble and fall, but fortunately many more of them still endure.

Here are some pictures of these in Grandma's memory:

Today is my birthday. I'm 20.

(I'm waiting for the raucous laughter to die down...)

No, really, it is my birthday. And in this recession -- or as the media coyly calls it, "economic downturn" -- I couldn't hit the town for a sumptuous steak dinner or an orchestra seat at a show. (I did, however, splurge this morning on quite a tasty Egg McMuffin on the way home from dropping off Fudgeteen and Ray at school.)

The point is, I was wonderfully surprised this week at all the unexpected birthday fun I received! It brightened my outlook enormously -- I might even call it a stimulus! :-)

It all began Sunday night, when I went to visit friends I've known for more than a decade; we were throwing a farewell party for one of our number, who is moving down South this week. We caught up on her doings, chatted, and munched on takeout Chinese food -- and then I was startled when they paraded out with a candlelit cake for me!



They also had me pegged politically -- as will anyone who read this blog for more than two minutes last year! Here is the card they gave me. (The greeting on the inside was "Wishing you an 'O' so happy birthday!") P.S.: Gotta say that Barack carries off those earrings quite well... ;-)



Here is "the gang." (Don't ask about Batman -- that's a whole 'nother story!)



Flash forward to today: I had been really good (for once!) about keeping all my birthday cards unopened until the big day. But I was curious about why my friend Patricia had sent me TWO cards! Finally, I opened the first one, and found that, again, my political reputation had preceded me. :-)





Hmm -- I wonder how many cards of himself the Prez gets on his birthday! Anyway, inside was tucked a page of quotation stickers from the future POTUS:



The other card, I figured, would be another pose of Obama -- but no, it was another one of my favorite people. Think "Walden"...







[The cards and stickers she got are from the Unemployed Philosophers Guild.]

Patricia also sent a package that I waited till mid-afternoon to open (i.e., drove myself crazy). And there inside, in a fitting tribute to my lifelong chocoholism, was the Christmas ornament called the "Angel of Chocolate." Her motto: "Because chocolate is heaven on earth." Amen! (By the way, I have to note that this angel looks about a size one. Has she ever actually EATEN any chocolate?!!)



Hubby also gave me one of his special hand-drawn cards that he does for every occasion; it is always based on a recent happening in the family, and this one, of course, included "baby Ray." I just love these! He also made us chocolate-chip pancakes for dinner (yum!), and the evening ended with chocolate cake.



Thanks to all my birthday "angels," who made my special day rich indeed!

[Second in a series. For those just joining us, we are following the parenting adventures of 16-year-old Fudgeteen and his bouncing baby sack of flour, otherwise known as this week's psych class project.]

After breakfast this morning, our newly minted parent went to his room with a sigh. "Since I have to put together all my stuff and all the baby's stuff, I'm not getting back to sleep."

Responded Grandma (stifling a grin): "Welcome to my world."

This was the big day -- his first outing at school with the baby, who he had decided to name Ray, or as he put it on the birth certificate, "Raymond Sunshine [Last name]." Our little Ray of Sunshine was born April 1, 2009 (the teacher said it could be any day this year), he was born at "General Hospital," and the physician was our family doctor, though Fudgeteen said some of his classmates credited the doctor who co-wrote the psych textbook.

Ray, Fudgeteen and I got out the door early today, and my son got his first try at being the one to place a baby in a car seat instead of BEING the baby in the car seat!



We had quite a collection in the car -- Ray and his car seat, Ray's cozy blanket-lined basket, and Fudgeteen's well-stocked bookbag and lunch container. I'm glad the teacher didn't require a diaper bag!

Flour-baby parenthood, Fudgeteen found out almost immediately, is fraught with danger. First period, he later informed me, "Some kid stabbed right through another kid's baby!"

He also heard about the classmate on one of the sports teams who couldn't get to a game, but got 20-odd synchronized text messages from those who did: "I'm going to kill your baby!"

I think this school needs Law and Order: Special Infants Unit! I totally understand why my son suggested Kevlar for flour babies, but I had to point out what every parent has to learn sooner or later: You can only protect them so far.

Even under the best of circumstances, parenthood isn't easy. For instance:

Apparently an occupational hazard of being a flour baby is that your flour can sift down from your head, and your parent will, throughout the day, need to -- well, reposition you. This resulted in Fudgeteen's French teacher coming upon a girl trying to whack her baby's flour levels into readjustment. Said girl was instructed to quit beating her baby.

Fudgeteen mentioned he ate lunch today in a gifted teacher's classroom rather than the cafeteria. This conversation ensued:

Me: "How come you ate there?"
Fudgeteen: "It didn't seem right, taking a flour baby into a lunchroom."
Me: "Why?"
Fudgeteen: "Think about it. You want emotional trauma? There it is!"

Fair enough. Far be it from me to put my grandson in therapy for the rest of his life, having nightmares about being turned into a ginormous chocolate chip cookie.

My son also noted it is "very difficult to eat your lunch while holding a baby" -- especially, he said with a faint glint in his eye, "while the baby grabs your lunch."

Well, yes.

Grandma must brag here that a number of people, including teachers, saw little Ray, said, "Awwww!" and commented on how cute he was. Hey -- just like his Dad!

There was quite a mix of babies in his class -- most were duct taped; Fudgeteen said it was the teacher's suggestion to "protect the baby from opening up at random in the middle of class." Yeah...I hate when that happens.

Some babies had faces. Some babies were clothed, some not. With the Oscars in mind, I asked for a red-carpet report, and my son mentioned one dressed like a "miniature Pope or bullfighter." The baby's name? "Chastity."

Teachers throughout the school seemed to enjoy the babies -- to a point. Fudgeteen's trig/pre-calc teacher told her class, "I'm introducing you to Descartes' Daycare." She walked to the closet, flung open the door, and indicated that anyone spending too much time on their baby would soon find that baby in Descartes' Daycare -- which, she noted, was not a cheap establishment.

The very first thing Fudgeteen said to me when I picked him up after school was to ask if I'd checked the current car-seat regulations! Then he leaned way in toward the seat, listened intently, then turned to me and said the following:

"I think I heard a tiny fart."

Each day, Fudgeteen must complete a "Baby Log" for class, stating if he needed a babysitter and what daily activities he completed with the child. He noted for today that he cuddled up with Ray while reading his psych homework.



He also mentioned "watching mom sing very badly to baby." Everyone's a critic! I maintain my right as a grandma to sing "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" -- if Mister Rogers doesn't count as introducing my grandson to culture, what does?

The day wound down, and Ray settled down for a well-deserved night's rest after his adventures at school.

With his first full day of parenthood under his belt, what had Fudgeteen learned?

"I pity [name withheld's] future children!"

Anything else?

There was a pause, and then: "This is why teenagers should not be parents!"

Bingo.

[Stay tuned for the continued adventures of baby Ray at high school...]