There have been years, as I have gotten older, when the levels of excitement and change were relatively low. This year was not one of those.
Foremost on the home front was the arrival in April of the Andersons. Meredith, Winter, and progeny had visited each year from New Hampshire in February. Duh. This time, they drove. And they stayed.
I had urged them each year to consider moving here, and to live in my house. Now they’re here. Adeline (8 in January) is in the second grade at La Paloma Elementary School in Fallbrook and Alice (4, with tongue out) attends pre-school at the Early Childhood Center.
Winter is working at Charlie’s Foreign Car in tony Encinitas, mostly on Porsches, Beemers, etc. Meredith recently started a part-time job at the local Boys and Girls Club, as a social media maven.
The grandgirls attended the Fallbrook Harvest Faire in October and each won her age group in the costume contest. The presenters in the photo are “Fallbrook Princesses.”
Julia and I took our trip to Berlin and Lithuania in June. It was a wonderful experience and I am so happy I was able to share it with Julia.
On June 12, we flew on Aer Lingus to Dublin and then Berlin. We were met at the airport by Isabel Traenckner-Probst and her daughter. Isabel was our principal contact among the family of Wilhelm Canaris. Our trip was founded on the return of materials that had belonged to Admiral Canaris and had been taken after WWII by my parents, who had been billeted in the Canaris house in Berlin in 1945/46. (You can see much more about the trip, etc., with photos and several brief videos, at socalbillmcdonald.com. Part I: Getting there You’ll be able to access the posts in order.)
On our first night, we attended a gathering of the extended Canaris family and spent the next several days with many wonderful new friends. Julia and I, and the Canaris family, visited the family home (photo below), and later Julia and I attended Mass at the church in which my parents were married. Perhaps too much information :), but the Canaris house is where I was conceived. My mother returned to the States in July 1946, followed soon after by my father.
Julia and I touristed a lot. Berlin—both old and new—is more than I had expected. Set a personal record for “steps” on one day and blew it away the next. We stayed in an especially interesting hotel for part of our stay. Its idiosyncrasy is reflected well in its name—Hotel Pension Funk.
We few to Vilnius, Lithuania, on June 19, and stayed in its Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the largest medieval old towns in Northern Europe.
We also visited the Curonian Spit, a 60-mile-long dune peninsula that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea, and is also a World Heritage site.
On our return to Vilnius, we stopped in Kernave, an ancient capital, to join thousands of people celebrating midsummer, longest day of the year.
We also found the graves of an earlier generation, the location of which had been unknown to us. I had had no idea where in Lithuania my grandparents had lived before emigrating, but we found out, amazingly, through a Facebook page on Lithuanian genealogy. We learned that my grandmother’s parents were buried in Zervynos, an ethnographic village being preserved in a Lithuanian national park not far from Vilnius. We drove there on June 24 and found the graves of our ancestors (photo). Zervynos was very likely where my grandmother had been born and grew up. It was especially profound, to me, to have my daughter, another generation, with me.
Back to Berlin, we celebrated Julia’s 30th birthday with friends at, of course, a biergarten.
Returning to Boston on June 28, we then took separate flights home. Wonderful people, sights, and lifelong memories.
An unusual, if not particularly significant, highlight took place in the spring. I was waiting to meet Adeline’s school bus, when I saw a car with “Google” on the side and what I guess was a camera on top. Yup, I was captured on Google Streetview.
Dillon is now actively engaged in “uncle-ness.” Julia and Sam are living in Beavercreek, Ohio, she still working with DFAS and he at defense contractor Leidos.
Also, as indicated in last year’s note, I’m publishing a blog about my active duty years in the Navy. Fifty years ago, I was on the USS Biddle (DLG-34), which deployed to the Western Pacific May-December 1969. That blog is BlueandGold1968-71.org. I found on Facebook a page dedicated to USS Biddle. I have since connected through that page with several shipmates. Even newer Biddlemen have found some of the posts interesting.
Wishing you a very merry Christmas and happy hindsight!