Another weekend in Seattle. My son was lovely this weekend, his spring break starting on Friday afternoon with his last after school science club meeting (he’s starting golf on Mondays after the break). We only had three days together but the same small pile of things came over from his mom’s house: the bag of Lego trains which would be disassembled and reassembled several times, swim trunks, craft books from the library, skateboarding items, golf clubs (despite the wind and rain for the weekend), stuffed bear, box of science projects. Once he got to the apartment everything had its place and we settled into games of Sorry, cheeseburger lunches, afternoon activities, and more games of Sorry.
It’s so big
Last night I took the dog to Peaks Island for a nighttime walk. The ferry was cold and I didn’t wear quite enough layers – perfect for the walk, but the wind coming across Casco Bay, combined with the perky pace of the Machigonne II car ferry, meant I was chilled to the bone when I got back to the mainland. I put the dog in the back of the car – after a three hour walk he curled up and immediately fell asleep – and I popped into a bar for a quick whisky to warm up. The woman next to me struck up a conversation when her husband excused himself to use the loo. She was from northern Vermont, she and her husband owned a craft brewery, and they had engineered a few days holiday in Portland around a “business tour” of a couple of breweries in town.
Conrad’s fools
I’ve been rereading Joseph Conrad of late. I was looking for books a few weeks ago at a book shop in Seattle and came across Nostromo, which I vaguely remembered reading many years ago but once I started reading it last weekend I realized I hadn’t read it before, I had only purchased the book and intended to read it. As often happens, though, you read truly great books when you need to read them, not before.
Learning to swim
Yesterday I took my son for a swimming lesson at the downtown Seattle YMCA. It’s for “high functioning autism spectrum disorder” children, which means he gets one on one time with a specially trained instructor for a half hour. Continue reading “Learning to swim”
Goodnight Jackie Robinson
I had the flu – realizing too late, after a few days of feeling shaky and feverish, after driving an hour and a half to see good friends while trying to shake it off. I spent a day in bed, drinking madeira and reading Thomas Mann, not a good thing in my condition and with my particular personal demons, and I was tired, ready for bed.