Cape Cod

After Philadelphia, we took the Amtrak Acela Express to Providence, where my parents picked us up and brought us down to their house on Cape Cod.

The train goes all along the Connecticut and Rhode Island coasts, and I had forgotten what a difference it is to have a coast that's actually accessible: estuaries and tidal inlets filled with boats! Marsh grass, clam shacks, New England beaches, the whole nine yards.

It's been a pretty epic trip. J put on his new glasses for the first time (video coming soon), and has done really well with lots of long stretches of travel. He and my niece E have gotten along famously, which is amazing to watch. She's almost 9, and I think being with J gives her a chance to just be a kid and not worry about being caught in the gravitational pull of her 11-year old sister S growing up. The sister has also been given to mood swings over the years, and as near as I can tell, one common dynamic with them is that S does the protective-older-sister thing, but E has always done a lot of caretaking to try and ease S's moods. Supposedly she's really good with the special-needs kids at school, and you can see that in her patience and humor with J. So they've spent many hours together, and J gets some experience of a cousin (and grandparents and uncles) a bit more...mainstream? From a family with fewer traumas, maybe.

At dinner he said, "I know I've only been here a few days, but I feel like I've lived here my whole life." Which is awesome, and clearly we'll have to make this a recurring thing.

My parents bought this place when I was 12 or so, and before that we'd come down every year and rented a place for a few weeks. Like any nice place to live, Cape Cod was a good financial choice for buying real estate 20 years ago, but it's harder to sum up the family experiences. Lots of sailing and swimming and biking the Rail Trail and spending a couple summers working here. I got to show Anna the sunset and take J sailing for the first time (he loves sailing and he's really close to swimming now).

It's nice to share that.