Baltimore

The trip to Baltimore was wondrous.

The girls--Morgan, Emma and Tegan--are so grown up. Morgan and Emma are almost as tall as me and you can have really grown up conversations with them.

Tegan is still a little bit a little girl. Josh and Cathy's friend, John, brought some very mild fireworks to dinner and one of them that spun around and shot off lots of sparks, scared Tegan horribly. She cried and cried--something I haven't heard her do for a long time. By the end, she was holding sparklers and not freaking out.

And they are all so beautiful. (I know I'm prejudiced, but the truth is, and Bern agrees, they all have the most beautiful skin you can imagine. Not a blemish or acne mark to be seen.) I love them profoundly.

Josh and Cathy are doing so well that I could weep with joy. Josh is the youngest partner in his large law firm (mostly because since he does a lot of bankruptcy and taxes his section kept the firm solvent during the recession.) And Cathy will be installed as a judge for Baltimore City in September. Her Taiwanese family is so proud that they are taking Josh and Cathy and the girls to Taiwan for Christmas to give offerings of thanks to the ancestors.

They live in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Baltimore--Baltimore is a city of distinct neighborhoods. (Two people I know who grew up in Baltimore both told me Mount Washington was their favorite neighborhood.) Mount Washington is the only hilly part of the city and looks like a Connecticut suburb. A very mixed neighborhood--million dollar houses next to simple ranch houses--and a fair amount of ethnic mix as well.

The 4th of July parade in Mount Washington came right by Josh and Cathy's house. It was four or five vintage cars, a woman on stilts dressed as Uncle Sam, a bagpiper and lots of the neighbors on foot on on bikes. A real neighborhood parade. We didn't even try to go see the fireworks over the harbor, knowing it would be a nightmare to park and walk.

They used to live in Canton, right on the harbor, and we once watched the fireworks over Fort McHenry from their upstairs windows.

The drive down was just over 5 hours with three stops. The drive back was a little longer because of the inexplicable slow downs of the Merritt Parkway. We once made the 280 miles in 4 hours and 15 minutes--but just once.