Where we're heading next:
Home Sweet Home
Quote of the Day
Peanut, "Wow, mom, now we can say we've been to all 50 states! What are we gonna do next?"
Grandma has been fascinated by the roads in Massachusetts. All you see are trees -- you'd think no one lives here -- but we know better. Little towns are hiding in there; even Boston is hidden within the trees. There are no billboards either and ugly gas stations are properly tucked behind the colorful foliage. Such was our scene, driving to Plymouth.
We smelled it before we got there: fish and salty air. Upon arrival, Sprite announced, "I just love beaches like this!" Her mama agreed wholeheartedly. Peanut looked at them stunned speaking my mind, "You like this stinky, dirty beach?"
Let's just say it took us awhile to warm to the charms of a New England seaside town. Eating a fish sandwich certainly helped.
The actual rock exists! Some claim it's a tourist hoax, but who cares? While we adults got the chills, the kids were unimpressed. They assumed the rock would look a little more special, but in fact, it is quite an ordinary rock.
We stepped aboard the Mayflower II (a replica of the famous Mayflower) and found it loaded with sets and actors playing the part of our first colonists. These actors were incredible and really brought the place to life, especially for the kids. We engaged them thoroughly and they never broke character. We asked, "Do you know what marshmallows are?" The man said "Of course I do! They're a plant. We grow mallows to use as medicine!"
Peanut broke out into a British accent when she spoke with these people. I was dying! A small crowd gathered around as she stumped a woman with a riddle from The Hobbit (the one for darkness) and the woman replied with a riddle of her own, stumping Peanut: "A hundred can fill a barrel. But one can fill a room." Apparently, this is one of the games the 30 or so children on board used to play for fun.
Now check this out. In the 1600's there was no spelling -- everyone wrote phonetically and there might be several spellings for a single word! Plymouth is correct. But Plimoth is also correct.
We found ourselves spending 3 hours at the Plimoth Plantation a few miles away. It's a living museum (our favorite kind) and the kids got to make bread, watch pottery and furniture being made, talk with natives and colonists and touch lots of things! The video engaged the kids with its presentation of the Wampanoag and the Colonist relationship. Our dreamy view of the First Thanksgiving is pretty much a myth, and Friend and I were pleased that they presented our history more accurately. After all, the natives weren't exactly overjoyed at hosting the colonists.
The ever dense Walden is a book I've yet to finish, but to visit Walden Pond was indeed special. Thoreau has always intrigued and impressed me (and others!) and there are so many lessons to be learned from him (Simplify CurlyTop, simplify!).
Grandma and I were
floored at the size and beauty of this pond. Did you know that the difference between ponds and lakes has nothing to do with size? True. If plants could potentially grow across the water and penetrate the bottom, it's a pond. (Obviously, depth plays a great role in allowing sunlight to reach the bottom.) If plant life is incapable of growing throughout the body of water, it's officially a lake!
We hung out on the sandy beach until Slugger and Little Man discovered a pretty steep hill covered in leaves. It was beckoning them to tear the seats right out of their pants and so they nearly did. Climbing and sliding, climbing and sliding, huffing and puffing and laughing joyously. Eventually everyone went home looking like they'd messed their pants.
Joining the other tourists on a walk around part of the pond, we made our way to the site of Thoreau's tiny cabin where he lived for 2 years. Each of us picked a rock, wrote our name on it and added it to the large pile in the woods -- a memorial to the great naturalist -- and filled up another little bottle of dirt from yet another state.
I have to mention something about this walk around the pond that we'd never see at home. The trail was quite narrow, but also crowded with people. Along the path there were several breaks, with stone steps leading down to the pond. People were actually changing beside the trail, hanging their towels on a branch and going for a swim! I admit it was a perfect day for a swim, but these people had no shame or modesty to speak of! It was hysterical. I loved them for it!
Friend explained that people in New England actually get in their water. Unlike us in the Pacific Northwest, who sit on the beach and admire it!
Apple picking was a blast. I'd imagined us climbing trees like we do when picking sour cherries off Grams' tree. Not so. Most apples can be reached by hand, and they have small ladders for the ones clinging to the top branches.
The orchard was immeasurable and we were only allowed down certain rows. They know precisely when each type of apple is ready to be picked and you can check the schedule beforehand.
Today we could pick Empires, a cross between a McIntosh and a Red delicious. They looked absolutely purple on the trees, but after being properly shined on your jeans, they appear as red and shiny as poisoned apples.
How to properly pick an apple:
Hold the apple by the bottom and twist. The stem is part of the apple and should come off with it. Never pull or tug. The branch isn't part of the apple and you have to pay $5 for every foot of branch you or one of your six kids break.
I'm not sure how many apples you're allowed to eat but it seemed to go something like this: eat, pick, eat, pick, eat, pick...where is Tank and what is he doing under the apple tree?
We paid $23 for a large bag of apples that we could barely carry back to the car. Then we bought apple cider, warm apple cider donuts and 9 apple turnovers for breakfast. From a calorie standpoint we were finished. But Friend had to make her home-made apple sauce to freeze for Thanksgiving. Then she had to make her grandma's Apple Crisp, and we (me, myself and I) had to eat it with a spoon all night long. Delicious.
We had such a fun day talking about apples that Slugger eventually asked, "Don't you guys have apples where you live?" Indeed we do. This tradition of theirs just might need to become our own.
Peanut's teacher told us about the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst right before we left. It was a perfect recommendation. While very small, it was thorough and had several things to keep children's attention beyond the gallery: an art room to make a project, sprawling lawns to run across, a cafe with clever details like cookies with a hole in them (The Very Hungry Caterpillar), and an auditorium showing twisted Steig cartoons. (I should note that Steig puts knots in my stomach and we almost left early.)
There was a particular display case showing the process of Carle creating a book: his very first sketch, some words, consecutive pages showing minute or grand changes until the final page as we know it finally emerges. To see an artist's work like this felt akin to being a fly on the wall.
Little Man would have sat and watched the monitor with Carle demonstrating his art all day long if I'd let him. It's like 5 year old fun with old-man skill. He draws an animal, then paints entire sheets of tissue paper, then cuts appropriate shapes from the tissue and pastes them into his drawings until the animal is "colored". Eric Carle is a geeeenius. (Tomcat joined his official fan club years ago!)
As much as we all enjoyed it, no one appreciated this stop more than Grandma. She was giddy. This may be the first genre of art that Grandma has deeply taken to. She said she'd like it "all over her apartment". There were also numerous original illustrations by other artists, that surely illicited a sentimental reaction from her. Original Shepherd, Margaret Wise Brown, William Steig, Dorothy Lathrop (the first Caldecott Winner) and dozens more.
On our way out of town Officer Spaghetti pulled me over. It would seem there are a lot of things Massachusetts doesn't like about our car right now. It was going 65mph in a 50. It's rear window is covered in shoe polish and it was missing some boosters (the law recently changed). He was irked and said as much; he thought he'd caught a UMass Amherst student heading home for the weekend, not some crazies like us. He was superb and tickled by our adventure and pretty much advised us to move along, but not quite so speedily.
Friend is really a New Yorker misplaced in Massachusetts; we met back in Albany and quickly became dear friends -- Tomcat included. When the babies started coming, we made a promise to see each other at least once a year so our kids would grow up friends.
Here’s how the 6 of them line up:
Slugger = 1 year older than Peanut
Sprite = 2 days older than Little Man
Tank = 10 days younger than Doodle
Try to imagine us skipping from coast to coast every year with our brood! One year during a remodel at our house, we had 9 people sharing 2 rooms! Many have been baffled or awed by our commitment, but we both emphatically say that it's been worth it!
This year the kids meshed like cousins immediately and it’s been beautiful. Our plan is working! One of these days the kids will take care of themselves and Friend and I can have a bona fide vacation.
Here's an example of how close the kids are: Slugger wanted a drink of Little Man's water, but he's in the no one else's slobber stage. So he told Slugger, "No, we can only share germs with our family. Well...uh..um..I know you are family, but I mean the other kind of family."
So the kids truly do have a sweet bond with each other and they genuinely enjoy their personal memories of going back and forth to each other's houses. In fact, this year Peanut wants to stay here; they have a small forest-swamp area behind their house and the kids run wild back there, gathering salamanders and whatever else. It's a heavenly place for her here. She rolled her eyes at me when I tried to tell her about the Massachusetts winters...
Friend has always wanted us to plan a visit out here during Autumn. Now, I understand why. It's the perfect show off season for everything wonderful New England has to offer.
Such a small state to be so heavy laden with sights! We're skipping Boston because we've been there before, and there are more interesting things for the kids to see outside the city. Namely, Friend and her kids in Fitchburg!
Before getting to their house for a
meatball dinner with her delicious homemade sauce, we made a few toilet stops for Little Man. (He's on the mend by the way.) We found ourselves in an Amesbury bakery loaded with goodies like Whoopie Pie and Fluffernutters. Suddenly a woman stopped and asked if we'd been to Vermont recently because she worked at Shelburne Farms and thought she recognized the kids. Can you believe that? This world keeps shrinking, I tell you.
Our next town was Lowell. We wanted to check out the New England Quilt Museum, which had a NYC exhibit going on. It was called Metrotexturals. I'm not kidding! I could barely keep a straight face thinking about it as I walked around the impressive quilts. A one-page scavenger hunt was set up for the kids -- such a fantastic learning tool for them. After they could identify a yo-yo quilt, had found the stitched words "made in 1853", spied a lyre and an iron gate among other things, they were rewarded with a bag of fabric scraps. I had to wonder if all kids would have been as thrilled as they were about their prize!
We quickly discovered a lot of small museums in Lowell's historic district. The most unique was the Revolving Museum, a small space with super funky art, like a car turned instrument! Grandma wanted to go in the Whistler Museum and it was actually the house he was born in, rather than a gallery of his own works (there were some of his etchings).
Still, the house alone was worth the visit, if you're interested in old houses like we are. Peanut and Little Man were fascinated with the original copper bathtub, for example. There were also many other noteworthy paintings on the walls as well as the only to-scale copy of Whistler's most famous painting "Portrait of the Painter's Mother."
