This is one version, the one I wrote to BJ..there is another..
it.
Do you want to hear the Logan Airport story...?? It was great. Eden's friend's home was lovely, and we took our time getting up, getting things straigntened up, and then visiting with Rob's mother. They have a separate room for people at the nursing home to entertain their farmilies and we used it every time. We went back for one last visit..always a bit sad...and ate the rest of a cake we had started 2 days earlier...then got on the road in rain and chill. We had planned to do a bit more sightseeing, and Old Ironsides was a possibility, but in reality we went right back, got the rental car checked in, and got back to the airport for an hour and a half which was a kind of adventure in itself. There was a play area for children, with a "baggage" carrosel...pretend (with a sign saying, don't do this with the "real" thing....so they could dissapate some of their energy.
I had been taking pictures out the window the entire time...not great, but a sense of the area. One white church after another...The yellow forsythia was fantastic.
We had left over Chinse food (Rob's mother seemed to like Chinses food and we brought "take out" twice....for her. And while we ate at the food mart and watched the airport activity I had my first "cherry beer"...beer with a cherry flavor...Samual Adams tavern was next to where we were and the menu had things like "Revolutionary nachos" and "Miniute Men" chili.... It had souvenirs so Sam Adams tavern must have been famous.
I added to my "people traveling with bears" photos (what am I going to do with these ?) album with a couple of girls coming from Disney World, with a hugh Pooh and Pluto (before the girl left she put her jacket on Pooh)... in addition A hugh stuffed animal...sitting next to a 20ish looking fellow..he said it was his then Hartsfield Typical little girl in stroller and Easter bunny Older girl, writing with her small bear nest to her So...even after missing 2 other sets, 4 for Logan and Hartsfield, in an afternoon.
There were in fact a lot of planes cancelled, but ours took off on time, the flight was easy, and back at Hartsfield...more fun.
The children got to ride the moving sidewalk at Hartsfield the little airport plane then...MARTA.....a treat and something different for them finally ...a neighbor picked us up at the station...
funny...we mentioned to him being at the LMA house...brought up Emerson.....he must teach English..he said..ah, Emerson the philosopher, but could not off the top of his head think of something he had written.
It was great seeing all Eden's matched luggage...she had added over a number of years. We all looked great, the children with their blue and pink bookbags....An extended American family on vacation....
Well...I will add this to the Diary, to go with the pictures...
Eden is already planning the next trip, I am sure.
...Have you ever thought about magazine writing ? Your experiences with assemblying helpers speak to an important subject and I would think that there would be trade journals that would find them useful. You are really such an expert on so many things.
Well, I will let you go...I have gone on long enough. Expect photos tonight or tomorrow.
Elizabeth
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April 21, 2000 Message From: echristian@webtv.net (Elizabeth Christian) Date: Mon, Apr 24, 2000, 10:28am To: Esther.Ann.MacCready@netgram.com Cc: echristian@webtv.net Subject: Hope you don't mind a "cut and paste" This is the letter I wrote to my eldest daughter....covers our trip to the Boston area. There is more to this...Rob's mother had been living in a retirement home in the Catskills until she had a series of ailments over the winter and February her daughter brought her to a nursing home near where she lives. As nursing homes go it is very nice....I have seen a number here in Atlanta and would give it an 8 on a scale of 10....maybe even a 9. Mrs. Landow is a little Jewish lady who probably suffered from the problems Betty F. wrote of in the Feminie Mystique...the 50s, 60s mother, wife...with no outlets of her own, who finally feel apart and with it the family. Her children Sandra, Stu, and Rob...in that order...went off to colleges in Boston, Washington DC, and Atlanta and have remained there. The set of cousins...Sandra has a girl and boy, and then Jay and Marti, ...all born within 3 years of each other....make a good set. So....this is a "cut and paste"....that I wrote to Phoebe, as promised. Hope it is not "coming on to strong" after all these years, but does give a sense of me. Best wishes, Elizabeth...Lizzie.... We all five had a great trip to Massachusetts. I hope that you and I can make a similar trip one day. Thursday morning we got up really early and took a cab to the Hartsfield Airport and flew north. When we got to Logan Airport in Boston we got a white rental Buick from Alamo and then had a tour of Boston. The historical spots...Paul Revere House, Old North Church, capital, Beacon Hill, Bostons Commons, Boston Public Library...are all very close to each other. Traffic was terrible. Half way through realized that Rob really knew where he was going. When he was fifteen years old he would come over from New York City to visit his sister Sandra, who was five years older, and going to Tufts University, and they would come into the city. We stopped at Concord "the shot heard round the world" where an early battle that led to the Revolutionary War had taken place. There is a famous statue of the Minuteman there. There is also a marked grave of British soldiers and a wreath was put there..Patriots Day had been April 19, the day before we came..with a British Flag. We drove on to the nursing home where Rob's mother is living, then on to Princeton Massachusetts where we stayed in the home of a friend of Eden's who had gone to Florida for the weekend. It was a beautiful country home, and since they had children, lots of toys and videos for Jay and Marti to play with. We went to a Jewish dinner at a local Synagogue that night and all Rob's family..his sister, brother, brother-in-law, niece and nephew (about J and M's age) were there and we all had a chance to participate and the rabbi called on different people to participate in reading parts of the service. The next day the family took Chinese food for a nice lunch in the family room where Rob's mother is staying, the children went over to play with their cousins and Eden and I went back to Concord and visit the Louisa May Alcott home where she wrote little women. Eden bought a nice cheese cake which we took back to share with Rob's mother. Saturday Mrs. Landow came to the Princeton house and Eden fixed a nice salmon lunch with special things she had bought at the cheese shop in Concord, and then of all things we went to the movies. Since we had to wait we had a tour of downtown Worcester ..in the rain...and then after the movie bought take out Chinse food for Rob's mother. I asked her some questions about her past. Seems her grandfather and 16 year old father came to the United States from Minsk (now Belarus) and both worked in the garment industry. Her grandfather was a furrier. He also sewed for the family and she remembered him altering dresses for her that her cousins gave to her. They ultimately lived on Georgia Ave. and her brother had a store in Flatbush. Saturday the radar tower came down at the Boston Airport and many people were stranded, but our plane took off on time at 3:15. We allowed ourselves plenty of time and the children enjoyed playing at the play area in the airport. I want to read more about the Boston and New England area so I will understand it better. I cannot come up next week because I must participate in the School of Pharmacy graduation on Saturday and then work in the Library on Sunday. I will try to come the following week some time. Perhaps I can take a few days vacation and we can do some things in Rome. Much love, Modify this text Clear this section. Edit the HTML of this section
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Massachusetts Links Orchard House: Eden and I visited on Friday, April 21 Princeton Massachusetts: This was the town Meg's house was in ...where we stayed Worcester, Massachusetts: Holden Massachusetts: Modify this list of links Clear this section. Edit the HTML of this section
I am really worried. Eden would not, absolutely would not stop going over and over and over the Sandra issue..she is obsessed. I have been here before. It returns me to the way I felt when my mother would go on and on and on about my grandmother...and to my father's last words to me in the hospital at Walter Reed....how he was looking into my grandfather's infection..had to leave because Mama and Grandma were arguing...and then...in the end the infection killed my grandfather. What regret my father must have been feeling.
And then Will's insistance that I break off relations with my parents....
And...if the circle be brought around...the inability to communicate with the Grays in Gray, Georgia...and how everything fell apart for Phoebe.
When I got up Sunday morning I was distressed to find Rob sleeping on the couch.
Later he referred to Eden's having a brief "nervous breakdown" over not visting Sandra Saturday after we left his mother.
What can I do, can I do anything to make Eden see what she is doing...how she "has it all" and yet is destroying her marriage.