The boy in the middle is my boys' oldest friend in America. So we have known him for 9 years, since they were all just little 8-year olds, (Matt P was only 7), knights playing with swords imagined from driftwood found on the beach just down our hill. Matt P adopted our family, he loved that we were different and foreign, whereas other people and children were suspicious of us for the same reasons. He spent so much time with us, but was forbidden by his parents to come to our house before 9 o'clock on weekends, so we knew, when the knock came early Sunday morning, that it was 9 o'clock, time to get up and let Matt in for a days' playing, and that he had already read the entire Sunday paper to hurry the time along until he could be with his two best friends! He became a part of our family, (we had several children like that in South Africa), as we all grew to love him. He is such an interesting child, very tall (a gentle giant) and wise and sweet, and a brilliant photographer already, at the tender age of 16! Emma and Jess call him their "brother from another mother".
Today was the Boston marathon, which has been going on for 114 years! It is the oldest marathon in modern times. Women have only been allowed to compete since 1972! In 1967 a woman ran after registering as K V Switzer, so that they would think she was a man, and when one of the judges found out he ripped off her number and tried to eject her from the race! How far we have come!
It was very thrilling to watch the wheelchair race, which was won by a South African, Ernst Van Dyk, for the 9th time! And an Ethiopian woman, 27 year old Teyba Erkesso, won the women's race. So inspiring. So I put on my new floaty shoes and off I went, but I had a headache which got worse, and so I only ran 1.49 miles (2.39 km), but the shoes work, because this morning I hopped out of bed with still no pain! I take Molly walking first, and yesterday I carefully cleared away all the leaf-litter and pine-cones, sticks etc in the one region of the dirt road that I run on, so that my run yesterday was smooth and easy. Today when I got to that section, I found that the turkeys had just as carefully scraped it all back again on to the road, looking for grubs and seeds!
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