A night across town

Sandra's sister, Barbara, is staying the night with Marian. We, in turn, decamped and headed across town to stay with Tess and Miss Cassie, giving Mike and Lynn a night to themselves.
Cassie'd started planning our time since she first heard that we'd be staying over. We'd walk to Friendly's for supper and, the next morning, drive out to Rutland to the transplanted K/P's for breakfast. She loves it that they put whipped cream on pancakes, the pancakes being pretty much just the delivery vehicle for the whipped cream.
The evening weather couldn't have been better, fresh and clear after the recent steam. We walked up to and around the complex of buildings atop the hill. Sandra showed the the window to the room to where Mike had been born when the building had been Holden Hospital.
You see things differently when you're a kid, paths where adults see none. Rather than taking the long way around the road, we followed a path over the stone wall and down the lawn to Friendly's.
During supper, we told stories of our summer so far, of Tess's friend from Clara Barton Camp who lives in Brooklyn and who wrote a genuine USPS letter. They marveled that I used to work at the Friendly's in Gardner, cooking dinosaur burgers and pterodactyl eggs for the grunting masses.

Unless you're with a five-year-old, you'd rarely thinking of skipping along the sidewalk. But skip we did, for varying values of we. (Sandra and Cassie skipped while Tess and I followed at a respectful distance.)

We tested the acoustics of the gazebo with serious and light-hearted songs. (I am prohibited by statute from singing in public, but did manage a few lines of The Lumberjack Song for old time's sake.)

And then it was on to home. I watched the Red Sox and while the ladyfolk enjoyed Cinderella on the big screen.

At bedtime, Cassie and I looked for, but could not find, the Jasmine doll that she absolutely had to have before she could sleep in peace. Not the little figurine nor the other two Jasmines, but one in particular who'd gone missing. She said her prayers through her tears and then was quiet and then asleep. In a short while, we were as well.