“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”
- Aristotle
Our friends from the north have departed : (.
So much has happened in the last couple of weeks that I won’t even try to journal. In narrative summary, the first week we spent at grandma’s cabin by the lake, and the second week we spent with our friends. The children and I have many new memories to assimilate. There is something indescribably memorable about a combination of beautiful nature, the companionship and conversation of longtime friends, and a texture of simple but pleasant activities. The boys ranged through the woods and had epic battles with wooden swords. The girls planned vintage photo sessions and read a play together. Everyone danced and everyone played games together. There were many, many conversations, much music. I got to discuss homeschooling plans and visions with my friend Chari (hi, Chari! I am sure you will be reading this!). And Chari got a lot of scrapbooking done.
After they left things felt flat and my children have been a bit at loose ends today. We talked a lot about our memories. We all agreed we don’t see enough of our friends considering how well we get along. Distance, combined with today’s gas prices, makes get-togethers much more logistically difficult than we would like. It was sort of a fortuitous thing that this get-together happened at all, since Liam has been gone for the first part of the summer, their oldest Anne was taking college classes and was only by good fortune able to get ahead enough in her work to get the week off, and both families have quite a lot of comings and goings which could have easily interfered with this trip.
Tomorrow I suppose we’ll get back into the swing of things by cleaning the house for the first time in about 3 weeks. But right now we are in transition.
Lots more, but it will take time to come out into the narrative section of my mind!
