January, 2010
Dear Family and Friends
2009
began with me home alone, barely mobile in a leg brace and a narcotic induced stupor.
Our best laid plans to spend the 2008 holidays on Crystal Lake went far astray
when I fell down a stairwell at work and completely severed the right
quadriceps tendon 3 days before Christmas. At the time, Sharyn and kids had
just arrived in Michigan after a harrowing 3 day drive through back-to-back
snow storms and were trapped there by continuous snowfall. I had a surgical
repair the day after the injury and was summarily discharged on Christmas Eve.
The remainder of the winter was marked by Sharyn arising in the dark to drive
me to work with my crutches and backpack and picking me up in the dark at the
end of the day.
Fortunately,
I had an excellent surgical result. By April the knee was strong enough to
permit us to travel to Belize where we spent a week on a 46 foot catamaran with
good friends from Crystal Lake, sailing among the hundreds of islands within
the barrier reef, snorkeling, eating well, and taking one novice scuba dive
within sight of the boat’s keel.
In
June, we moved into new home on Lake Michigan about a half-mile from the west
end of Crystal Lake. Sharyn spent the summer nesting in the new house and
redistributing furniture here and there. She now possesses a Michigan driver’s
license and will vote there this fall – making us once again a bi-state married
couple. I was fortunate to commute from NH to MI several times this summer and
fall.
Sharyn returned to a temporary job working with our child abuse team at the medical center in September and both kids returned from their summer jobs to college.
Andrew graduated from the University of
Vermont on a very cold December morning at a ceremony held for the mid-year graduates
at Ira Allen Chapel where he upstaged both the President of the University and
the Governor. As a graduation present, we took both kids to Stowe for a few
days of skiing and spa-ing. After Christmas, we loaded up two cars and drove to
Michigan to spend a very snowy New Year’s with the growing number of friends
who are retiring there. Andrew went swimming at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The
rest of us went to bed.
Chelsea is a sophomore at Carleton planning to do “something medical abroad” this summer. Andrew with his new A. B. degree is heading to Nevada, camping out along the way, for a temporary job with the U.S. Geological Survey while he contemplates taking the GREs. Sharyn and I are “at home” in a small house we are renting on the 4th Fairway of the golf course at Eastman – a second home community in the tiny town of Grantham, NH. For those who we forgot to tell, we sold the family homestead in Vermont in September, 2008 and downsized to Eastman. We are quite comfortable here, but are at risk of having the landladies putting the house on the market soon and continuing our nomadic existence. We’ll do our best to stay in touch. In the meantime, best wishes for the New Year.
John
Sharyn
Andrew
Chelsea
P.O. Box 1093
Grantham, NH 03753
603-865-5125
779 Sylvan Rd.
Frankfort , MI 49635
231-352-5351