FRESH POND!

The Manshu and I walk here almost every day with other people and their dogs, babies and tractors. Today I got a ride on a Caterpillar from a friendly Works employee. Its that kind of day.

HOME OH HOME SWEET

Boston has been on my mind. Actually, New England. Because the possibility of having to leave makes me notice what I have before its gone. How can people think lightly of where they live?

I know how it feels to live "away". I lived in Chicago for ten years. It was a big party, but not home.

I don't mind the pushiness at rush hour. I've been to India and NYC. Bostonians are daarlings.

ALL four seasons! The bright leaves against crisp blue skies in Fall. The solemn drop of snowflakes on bare branches in the grey half light. The hope of spring and the sudden surprising gust of salt air from thawed oceanside. The freedom from the opression of clothes in summer. Halter tops and sandals at outdoor cafes after long hikes. The Ocean! The Mountains! The History!

My family has lived here since the 17th century . Two famous houses in New England (one in Gloucester on my mother's side and one in Marshfield on my dad's) were built by my ancestors. Sarah Messer, the author of The Red House, grew up in the one built by and inhabited by my father's family- The Hatch Family in Marshfield, Massachusetts. She writes about growing up in this house. It is a wonderful book full of historic details and Hatch/ Messer Lore. The other beautiful house below belongs to Lucette White and her husband who have also honored my family history by keeping and maintaining the house built by my great grandfather, Judge Edgar J. Sherman, the house on Bass Rocks in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Lucette, incidentally, is a magnificent and world reknown painter.

The house I grew up in is in Norwell, Massachusetts on River street just across the river from the Red House. This house was built later, in 1900, but was a wonderful house in which to grow up with a large swath of woods in the back and Stetson Shrine road to the left, where we roamed freely. My younger siblings Sarah, Rebecca, Joshua and Joel were 8,6,4 and 3 when we left the house in Norwell. I was 13. Jonathan was 14. And Marcy left to live with our biological mother in Chatham Massachusetts when she was 16, 2 years before.

Many of my siblings now reside in Maine. The last frontier of New England. But I am the only one back in Massachusetts. I feel like this is where I belong. I hope to stay.