Father's Day 2011

Monique has labored hard to restore the front (or is it the back) of the house after the blessed sewerage connection wrought its disturbances. Here is a composite result. Monique was there to greet us on Father’s Day 2011!

John and Mike (from next door) were busy meanwhile rebuilding the dock that had been rammed, wracked, and otherwise brought to abrupt awakeness the summer before by a little mishap that Mike felt responsible for. Here he made amends displaying terrific skills and tooling armaments sufficient to cause the celebrated father of the day, that’s me, to experience transports of envy.

A leisurely afternoon later—interrupted only by a half-harrowing, half-delightful excursion to the biggest (indeed only) dog park I’ve ever seen—far too big to see the fifty or so dogs that were gamboling all around…

We settled down to drink a toast of cranberry juice. Above the hosts…

And here the Father in question!

Gifts—my God—splendid gifts were bestowed on yours unworthy, not least a live quince bush, of which in another post, the by now traditional cigars, and four brand new but no longer manufactured Shaeffer fountain pens, courtesy of e-Bay, no less. Sometimes it seems that the very hard labor that lets you become a father is not just its own reward.