Arriving in Littleton at 5:30pm, the boys were fed hamburgers grilled by grandpa and ate them in Grandma’s greenhouse encased in glass. As they sat there eating they looked out into her garden sown beloved with her own hands. The windows were bordered by French lace curtains that she bought in Brugge and sewed.

Grandma told a story about a book she was reading about a boy who lived in an orphanage and had nothing but a broken fitted doll and when that was taken away from him he used nothing but his imagination about the wooden doll to help him get through his day. Can you imagine? She asked. Always a pertinent story, ending in a lesson.

Like Alice in Wonderland, the boys are growing too big for the house and I took them for a walk in the pouring rain to the baseball field. Using their imaginations, they began a game of baseball with the tennis ball they had. We took off our shoes and ran barefoot in the red sand, with new rules sprouting up as we played, rules that felt like a different language to me but they all understood, “You can live twice if you want”. “If you want the player to stop stealing bases you need to yell time, but only if you have the ball in your hand.” Brevitt said. So elated that they had me all to themselves, no computer, no phone…I had made the conscious decision to turn it all off on this trip and only write, they ordered me about. Because I was so good at batting with my hands, they kept me as hitter. The sun came out to shine on the stormy clouds and we waited for the award, a magnificent rainbow, the prisms shining down magnifying the brilliance of the gold in the boys hair and the emerald in the grass, as well as the red stains on our clothes. Grandma was not going to be happy!

We washed off the sand into the rain puddles and walked home barefoot. That night I slept with Axel and Tucker in Amy’s bed. Brev, the only brave one, that is until is light switched off on its own and he ran into our room. Axel made room for him and there I slept with my puppies all around.

Grandpa, our alarm clock, woke us up at 5am to take us to the airport and Grandma came down to have her big grandsons sit on her lap and hear their animated stories, already charged up for our day of travel.

Looking in the mirror, I thought about a comment on Twitter by Velocity that asked if people dressed up when they traveled or dressed like a nomad in Jesus sandals. I had commented back that I like to dress up to assuage the dirty looks I receive when my boys are launching 360’s off of every precipice. Today though, there was no taming my wild hair and I had forgotten to lay out nice clothes, so bohemian it was to the preppiest town in America.

As we walked through the security line I told the boys about a time when I traveled alone with three babies and strollers and how I once lost the baby bottle and panic struck. When we were seated on the plane I told Brevitt that this was about the time that he would grunt out an enormous poop and deliver it with a satisfied smile. On this trip, all went smoothly. We even had the entire plane from NYC to Nantucket to ourselves and sprawled out on the seats. Plus and added bonus, a handsome and sweet steward with a killer smile. All was good.