the barn

We spent part of the Fourth of July in my super sweet Aunt Kate's super sweet back barn, the "third" structure on her property. This was a total joy. Spending quality time with my aunt, who I never get to see, in this amazing little barn structure, hiding out from the heat and lunching on sandwiches made with delicious thin slices of Pepperidge Farm bread (that's something you don't find on the West Coast) and drinking a few liters of pink lemonade. All awesome.

Growing up, we had a screened in porch on the back of our house and spent so much time there in the summer. If I lived at my Aunt's house now, I'd probably move the whole family out to this barn until the leaves started to change. It was an oasis in an otherwise predictably busy and loud (and new to both of the kids, born and raised in foggy, cold San Francisco) Fourth of July.

checking in

Back to the vacation log!

On the first Monday of our trip, we packed our bags, said goodbye to our friends in Troy, and set out on the four hour drive to Wolfeboro, my home town. We stopped in Brattleboro, Vermont and ate sandwiches in the car while the rain spat. Poor Oliver had some freak allergy attack at our friends' house and half his face was swollen like a balloon, which made him such a sympathetic little character. That day was a sweet, cool memory, driving across the entire bottom of Vermont on a route I've driven hundreds of times in my life.

We made it into Wolfeboro mid-afternoon, checked into our sweet little cottage, and headed out for dinner and a drive to the beach. The view in the photo above is one I will always remember. In the summer my father used to meet us at this beach for cheese sandwiches after work, and it's where my mother would take us all weekend long with her posse of work friends, and it's where I lifeguarded for several years. I've stared at this view for more hours than I can even imagine, I'm sure.

Next morning? Dunkin' Donuts! While I am mortified that a shop like this has made its way into a small town like Wolfeboro, and while we live in a city rife with places like this, the temptation was strong. It was right up the road!

After gorging on donuts we headed to the beach for the day, and after that did some late afternoon grocery shopping, and after that took a stroll into town and back in the warm evening weather. This was the day I'd been fantasizing about since we last visited Wolfeboro in the summer, six years ago. Some days things feel too sacred to pull out the camera much, this being one of them.

I have taken so many photographs of donuts lately, I just couldn't help myself.

LOOK

We have just returned from the vacation of a lifetime. Almost two and a half weeks on the East Coast, in upstate New York and in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, the town I grew up in. The weather was glorious and hot, the way I love it. We saw old friends and relatives, we celebrated the Fourth in the most classic way, and I personally never wanted to come back to San Francisco. It was life changing.

But now that we are back in San Francisco, I don't really want to leave. Not yet, anyway. I took one cagillion photos on our trip. I need to sort through them and can't wait to write about everything.

In the meantime, here is a copy of the September 13, 1960 issue of LOOK, a now-defunct photography-based magazine, similar to Life. My father was photographed for the magazine, in an article on a socialite from Wolfeboro, the town we both grew up in. My father was one of her "two or three "serious" romances between June and September".

Dad and Betsy.

My brother and I treasure this article. This is my brother's copy. It is so touching for us to see our father, who passed away in the winter of 2004, in the pages of this magazine with his tan lines and the immense galaxy of freckles he gave to both of us. I'm sure this article was a big deal for Wolfeboro at the time. Wolfeboro makes headlines now because of the current republican presidential candidate summering in town (whose name shall never be mentioned here), but not much else has drawn national attention to this little lake town.

Our time in Wolfeboro was so full of history. Everywhere I turned was somewhere I had worked (I have worked so many jobs I can't even believe it myself), the high school my mother was a fixture at, somewhere my grandparents had lived, somewhere I played, someone's house I loved. Our dear Aunt Kate is the only relative we have living in town (so glad she's still there). Enough time has passed that there is no sting from my father's death, only happy memories. It was a thrill to bring my husband and children there for a nice length of time and to really, truly feel summer.

David and I have been on a never-ending quest to figure out where we belong, with the pull of the East Coast so strong for me and the love of Northern California so strong in him. This trip helped solidify the idea for us that we need to have BOTH in our lives. We still need to figure out how. We have been lacking direction for so, so long, like broken records at parties, telling our friends we want something else, but never knowing what. We both feel like we've found somewhere else to call home, even if only a few months a year, and frankly, it's more doable there than most other places. It could be years before we have that all in place, but I think for once we have a vision together, and this is a big deal for us. It was a life changing trip, I tell you.

wolfeboro in the snow

The only thing that would've made my Christmas any better on a personal level would have been to be here, in Wolfeboro, all snowed in and watching some crazy dog sled race thought the center of Main Street. It's such a dream for me, and I wonder how it feels for all the people who stayed all these years and are still there. I have missed it, and my father and grandmother, and our old house, and my old friends (dead and alive) today, as I do every Christmas. The nostalgia is always overwhelming. We've had an absolutely perfect day, but this is the one thing that could've topped it. I'm not sure how many more years I can go wondering what it would be like to have a white Christmas again, I miss it so!