Rainbows

"I like to look for rainbows." 

And I look for literal rainbows in the sky, literal rainbows in signs, figurative rainbows in people in their diversity of backgrounds and looks and how they live their lives. So, happy end to Pride Month to those for whom the rainbow means more than just a phenomenal, breath-catching natural wonder in the sky. I see you. We see you. 

Becky and two good friends

Living in the East can be challenging as a Mormon for various reasons. Most people either know very little about your faith, or what they do know is woefully inaccurate or negative. For us, another challenge has been the transitory area that we live in, where Mormon families move in for a few years and then move out, heading to other places - often back to Utah - for bigger houses, a lower cost of living (although Utah is not as lower-cost as it used to be), to be closer to their families, etc. We have become quite accustomed to this annual rite of passage. Its frequency does not diminish the hurt, unfortunately. 

And so it is that this month, we bid farewell to another awesome family, the Jackson party of eight. That's Jessica in the middle, between our friend Brooke in the black shorts and Becky in the pink shirt. And for once, here was a family not moving to Utah! They're off to Vermont. Becky threw yet another goodbye party. I'm done keeping track of how many we have thrown, let alone attended! At the Jackson's farewell party, Becky made a map of the U.S. with a little thought-bubble that read, "It's not THAT far!" and charting the distance between Massachusetts and Vermont versus that between the Bay State and Utah. 

We are thrilled for them, wherever they would go. But we're just a smidge happier that our family can visits theirs without flying across the country! On to seeing the Jacksons in the fall in their new, beautiful surroundings!

Cape Cod with the Rosses

Having family in from out-of-town is one of the coolest parts of our life. All of our family on Becky's side lives in the West, while all of my immediate family lives in the Boston area. So when Jodi, Brandon, and their four near-teen, teenage, and post-teen kids decided to visit Boston this month, we were very excited and couldn't wait to spend time with them. They did their own thing most of the time while in Boston, and we then spent most of a day with them on the Cape. 

Becky and her sister Jodi posing on the beach, with Brandon joking as always in the background. This was on a cloudy Saturday afternoon somewhere near Brewster, where they had rented a cool vacation home.

Brandon chillin' with Mouse, who's showing off her dolphin tattoo. After years of holding out allowing Mouse to finally get inked, we thought, "Well, it's a special occasion since we have family in-town, so why not now?"

Cousin Matt playing games with Mister I, who is wearing my old Little League t-shirt:

Grouse soaking up Daddy-time with me in the front yard and driveway, where we tossed a Frisbee around for a long time while everyone else bonded. The Little Dictator loves to monopolize my time and attention when others are around!

How many family members can we cram onto this rickety see-saw?

Oldest to youngest: Cousin Brayden (in college) holding his - and everyone's - youngest cousin Grouse (not yet in college, let alone school!)

Cousin Allie with Moose, Mouse, and Goose on a beach near Brewster. Our girls were loving girl-cousin time, and I think the feeling was mutual.

We got shots of all of the girls together, and then all of the boys together. In this little cul-de-sac, all of the boys spent time tossing a Frisbee around while Grouse and I played Whiffle Ball. Brandon kept calling the Frisbee-toss "habenschlaber," a made-up word that he said came from either Norwegian or Swedish. I'm laughing now (nearly five months after their visit) thinking about hearing that word repeatedly that morning!

It was not nearly enough time, but we are thankful for what time we could spend together and to have some of our family members spend time in a locale that we love and call home (for now). 

The Big Apple and Hershey Park

Goose was in the Honors Orchestra this school year, as a fourth-grader. To celebrate the orchestra's great season, all of the kids, along with some adult chaperones, took a weekend-long trip to New York City to see a Broadway show and then perform at Hershey Park in the middle of Pennsylvania! We were thrilled for her. Becky also coordinated with her good friend Emily and their family, who live near Pittsburgh, to meet up at Hershey. 

Below are the highlights:

Touring New York City, seeing a Broadway show, and then hitting Hershey Park, all over the course of two full days ... wow, did this band of troupers pack a lot in! It made me tired just thinking about all of their logistics and schedules and adventures. I think I had it easier, being at home with our three youngest kids.

It was a long trek there and back, and the whole bus-load of people was eager to return to Boston on Saturday evening, late. Everything had been going so well, and then Murphy's Law intervened: just outside New York City, the bus's air conditioning failed. In about 85-degree, 90-plus percent humidity. Ugh. 

Becky and Goose snapped this photo of them roasting on the tour bus. The driver pulled over somewhere in western Connecticut, and people bought huge bags of ice to pass around to bus riders to cool off a little bit. It provided temporary relief, though real relief would only be theirs once the bus dropped everyone off at the local high school. 

So, this happened...

My 1998 Mazda 626 has been my trusty vehicle since January of 2002. That's 15-plus years of dependability and, aside from annual maintenance of about one thousand-plus dollars, a beautiful machine that has kept car payments at bay since October 2005. When I first got the car, I was 27 years old, living in my first apartment (in Arlington, Massachusetts) near my first real job, and dating a nice girl who lived near my parents' house. I wasn't planning on getting a car when I moved to the Boston area, but this relationship brought me back to the South Shore of Massachusetts, and having a car became a really nice-to-have. 

This car has never ventured further than New York, but it's seen a lot of New England. It's nearing 150,000 miles. It's been a very reliable commuting car. And until a few weeks ago, it had never been in an accident.

And then, this happened:

A slight fender-bender at a stop sign, when the compact SUV in front of me -- stopped at the sign -- inched out ever so slowly into traffic, then made a quick attempt to turn left onto a busy street. Seeing him move out, I went forward. And that's when he stopped suddenly to avoid hitting a car careening down the street. I didn't stop in time, and I was totally at fault. The other driver was a very kind man from Kenya named Benson. We did the usual post- accident check-in and went on our ways. 

And my old trusty car needed a major face-lift. Could have been a lot worse, and thankfully we both were fine. 

Salzburg, Austria: 1997

You can barely see anyone's faces in this photo-of-a-photo from Timo's way-back machine. I snapped this image twenty years ago this spring in the hillside near Salzburg, Austria. In the photo are, from left: Luke Hansel, Jen Raffetto, Jamie Swanson, Angie Allen, Luke's cousin Grant, and Tom Gryta. Seven Americans touring western Austria on a beautiful, warm weekend, just weeks before our friendships would face the ultimate challenge of distance back home in the States. 

This photo basically shows Luke Hansel's worlds colliding: Tom and Luke went to UMass-Amherst, so I was confident that we'd remain friends. Luke's cousin Grant studied in Vermont, which would be where Luke would spend each weekend of his senior year, without me and Tom. Luke was dating Jamie, who went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They were a couple for about another two years after we left Germany, which is remarkable. Jen was Luke's friend from Massachusetts. And Angie was everyone's friend, though she came to our circle of friends through Luke.

Below are other photos from our wild weekend in Salzburg. First is me on a pedestrian bridge over the Salzach River. This photo was taken by Jen, who I had a crush on. She was a Sound of Music fan, and since the movie was primarily filmed in and around Salzburg, she wanted to take in all of the Sound of Music sites that she could. In 1997, I still had never seen The Sound of Music. But when you're in your very early twenties and smitten with another person, you tend to go along for the ride, no matter how loose the ties you might have to the event. That's how I found myself on a bus with Jen and about 40 other Sound of Music fanatics, singing and taking photographs as the tour meandered around the city and dropped our multi-national troupe here and there, places I didn't know were in the movie and dropping names of characters (real or imagined) that I had no clue about.

Comically pointless. But I've since come to really like The Sound of Music.

Once the Sound of Music tour ended, I was subjected to all manner of ridicule about my exploits with Jen - as well as questions about my masculinity and sexuality - by the rest of the group. We tried to meet up with some of Grant's friends. All I remember is us waiting in a dismal college dorm plaza, leaves and debris scattering in the wind, on a cloudy afternoon. And Grant and Luke each had a huge plastic crate of beer bottles. 

Oh, we were a sight! 

Speaking of which, I thought we had a sight of the Unabomber. Actually, the real bomber had been arrested almost a year earlier and was in federal custody when we were making wise-cracks about Luke looking like the Unabomber in Salzburg. But that's the silly, insensitive, immature stuff one does in their twenties - and hopefully leaving it there and then as they grow up. 

But before we left Salzburg and had to grow up, we had one rip-roaring crazy time in this beautiful city! It has been two decades since I was first there, but the memories of that weekend remain strong in my mind. Maybe they were cemented so because I knew the reality: I would soon be returning to the U.S., and my very cushy student life of laziness, friends, eating pizza all the time, and barely going to class would come to a crashing end. So I soaked up as much of the comfort, crazy, and casualness of life, Salzburg included.

Animal Masks

Halloween is months away, but it's never too early to try out new costumes! We broke these out at our monthly neighborhood birthday party with friends. Our kids loved switching masks among themselves, since there was a different mask for each of our small traveling zoo! And as a bonus, our friends let us bring home these four masks. Our girls hung two on their bedroom door, and our sons did the same...

...until, one night, when a mask fell to the floor shortly after our girls had drifted off to sleep, and the sound of the mask crinkling onto the hallway spooked them. Then the party was over, and the masks came off their door. Thank goodness we didn't have ghost-faced masks!

Paris, 1997

Twenty years since I was last in The City of Lights. And while Paris was not my favorite destination in Europe during my junior year abroad (my taste ran to the more exotic, less well-traveled Eastern Europe), it provided some wonderful memories with friends. My first trip there was a long weekend in February 1997, to bring my good friend and quasi-potential girlfriend Sara her Eurail Pass after hers failed to arrive in time from the States. 

With tongue firmly in cheek, I jokingly referred to myself as "The Greatest American Hero" for taking a train ride to Paris to hand-deliver her pass. Oh, what deprivation to be forced to do such a thing! When Sara greeted me at the just-opened door of her friend's apartment, her first words were "You're really here?! What the f*%^?" 

Recently, I kindly reminded Sara via text about how she so warmly, no...lovingly...welcomed me to Paris with her Eurail Pass. Her response? "Ha! I always had such a way with words!" Somehow, we made up for this first encounter in Paris by not getting on each other's nerves as two obnoxious, self-involved Americans touring this beautiful city for the first time. 

And maybe, just maybe, being in Paris nudged our friendship toward romance for a few days. But like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, my lips are sealed.

Another thing about Paris in February: we were graced with gorgeous weather. It felt like late April. No jackets required. No downpours or snow, though I do recall needing an umbrella briefly one morning while waiting to meet up with Sara. We quickly toured the major scenes in the Louvre, saw the Eiffel Tower, walked along the Champs-Elysees, and checked off a whole lot more of the usual touristy stuff.     

Sara exerted more patience toward me than I warranted, as I recall giving my history-lover geek self an extra-long leash and verbally marveled at the history that had occurred in this metropolis, along its streets, overhead, and by the Seine. Stirring moments, like when the Free French Army victoriously marched down the Champs-Elysees after driving out the Nazi occupiers four years after German forces had invaded Paris, were described from the pages of history books I had devoured, shared with my traveling companion with as much gusto as I exhibited scarfing croissants on our visit. 

*   *  *

Seeing Paris once, over a long weekend, was not enough for me. But seeing it a second time, for just a weekend, and upping the ante from one woman to two women, proved both too soon and too much estrogen against my admittedly watered-down testosterone. Hey, I'm not the world's most masculine man (so sang the Kinks). One of the women on my second trip was Asja, a Latvian-American who wore electric-blue eyeliner and who I was crazy for. She was also crazy for me -- or at least had been, months earlier, unbeknownst to me. Our timing was off. 

And in Paris, our timing was really off. Made to feel like a third wheel, I wandered by myself a lot while she and her BFF (before, I think, that was a term) Kim saw the sights. Not good times. We all were weeks away from returning to our separate colleges in the States, so no one saw the point in friendships becoming more than that.  

And I haven't been back to Paris since -- a function of time, money, other interests when/if I do ever travel internationally again, and a younger colleague who is profoundly enamored of this marvelous Paris, so I kind of feel like I've seen the City of Lights vicariously through his social media posts and him talking so much before and after his visits. 

But, one day, I'll be back in Paris, and the always-beautiful Becky will be by my side.