Vn45.1 Going Home 7/15/77

When today’s Logo Session (#39) and errands were finished, we
hurried home to pack up provisions for a 2 week vacation in Connecticut.
The house is empty between tenants, and since we are renting it
unfurnished, it IS empty. What did the children expect of this vacation?
What did they look forward to? And how did they first react to going
home?

Both have looked forward to the trip. The outstanding feature of
our home is lakes and two beaches a few hundred feet away. Learning
how to swim was an activity both talked of with anticipation. Miriam
asked me to commit myself to spending time with her several places:

the playground at the Guilford Lakes School — Miriam said
specifically that she wanted to use the rings where she had learned to
skin-the-cat last year, noting she would be able to do it much better now.
the playground at Jacob’s Beach — this town beach at the Guilford
Harbor on Long Island Sound has swings for babies, tots, and adults,
and small and large sliding boards; from the top of the larger you can
look over the harbor and town dock and watch sailboats and water-skiers
out on the Sound. Miriam remembered as a primary description of the
playground another piece of equipment, a large metal cross with a sit-
upon animal at each end (Elephant [her favorite], Pelican, Turtle, and
Hippo). These four seats are centrally supported by springs which permit
motion vertically with small excursions of rotating and twisting.
Great Hill — this names a specific section of the road from
Miriam’s nursery school behind a hundred foot bluff and down to Lake
Quonnipaug. The road drops and twists quite rapidly and was thrilling to
follow in my old MG.

Notice that Miriam’s focus was on places, whereas Robby’s primary
interest was to play again with his friend Raymond. Miriam has friends
in Guilford (Scott, Toddy, and Sarah are three from nursery school;
Karen and Lisa are girls she liked and played with while at the baby-
sitters’) but her interest did not focus on them. This focus on
places where she had done things may be an artifact of her leaving
Guilford soon after turning 5, before developing the close sort of
attachment Robby shows to his friends.

Upon arrival we unloaded our portable goods into our empty home.
We found in the basement objects of ours and experienced a delight of
repossession. Miriam was obviously as happy to find the mattress from
her crib (which she slept on for 2 weeks) as I was to restore above the
hearth the motto I burned in wood upon first occupying the house —

	
	I built this house with my own hands 
	And needed helps of friends
	Memento be -- a friendship house --
	Past days when friendships ends.

Relevance
These notes document some of Miriam’s expectations for
the 2 weeks’ vacation at our house in Guilford.

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