omigosh Kathy!

you are soooo cute.

quote:

Originally posted by lilylady:
You live in a HUGE home.

Do you see yourselves staying there during retirement as well?

Do you have upkeep help with the home?

I pay kathy to clean every other Saturday! We hire out for paiting, plumbing, electrical and roofing. The rest we pretty much do ourselves, "we" being mostly kathy since I take care of the yard and gardens.

We will have trouble selling this place because it is the best house in the neighborhood and because we have papered and tiled it in a very "us" kind of way.

I think Kathy will still be here after I die, and the house will be falling down around her. It will be full of cats.

jf

Do each of you stay in touch at all with your ex's?

A footnote, when Jack left his job as a teacher, he hired a young photographer who stayed at the prep school 1 year..That young man moved to the public HS where he taught my oldest for 3 years..(and let me use his classroom to scan all the old family slides)

A small world really, and having not yet met Jack, I realized how his actions had influenced us for good!

quote:

Originally posted by EHpianist:
When did Kathy first tell you she had two boys? How did you react? Did you get to know them before you began to date formally?

How in the world do two lawyers get along in the same household?

I knew about the boys from the get-go and sometimes drove kathy to pick them up at daycare because her ex kept slashing her tires. And later most of our weekend "dates" involved the boys as well. I really liked them from the start and they seemed kind of in need of a father figure.

It was clear that kathy was going to be a "package deal" and that was ok with me.

jf

LL, creative drive and energy?

My energy days are pretty much gone. I now get exhausted just thinking about what it took to get through law school with a horror story divorce, two babes and trying to keep food on the table and likewise with all the work I've done on this old house. I guess I do still get spurts, but things like the piano and the internet distract, and I feel like I've finally earned the right to lay low and relax a bit.

As to the creative part, aren't all of us musicians frustrated or at least undeveloped artists? It seems like so many of you people here have divers talents. Maybe it's a right brain thing

Bee, as to my exes, no. Sadly, neither of them have maintained contact with the beautiful children they fathered. No. 2 became a socio-pathic psycho. The tendencies he had (which I should have recognized, but chose not to, I guess) just exploded after our divorce. I mean he went rambo nuts! He was also incensed at the notion of child support, so "went underground" to use his phrase. So, after fighting me tooth and nail for custody for two years(nope - he wasn't gonna share custody - nope no way), he dropped off the face of the earth. Haha, funny story. I actually never pursued child support, but because I was on welfare for part of the time I was in law school, the State went after him relentlessly. At one hearing, he came to court dressed in a rented, b&w striped prisoners suit with a sign hanging around his neck saying, "I am a prisoner of the Suffolk Family Court." Haha - it worked. They sent him to jail on contempt.

No. 1 was a much nicer person, but just as pathetic in terms of parental responsibility (or personal, for that matter). He has never made one single effort to maintain contact and when I would initiate it, he would more often than not make excuses. He's a poor wounded soul for whom the burden of life is almost too much to bear.

How sad for the boys...and yet...they have Jack, the perfect Dad! The whole experience perhaps a blessing in disguise? Feel free to edit me if this becomes too personal.

I just am in awe of your family..Your boys and S are such wonderful kids...their Dad, Jack, a big part but YOU as their Mom has turned their childhoods into something special...

I have often thought the same, Bee, re blessing in disguise. They couldn't have had a better dad than JF has been. We were all very lucky he found us.

The needlepoint pillow says...

"Anyone can be a father, but it take someone special to be a Dad"...

But in this case it applies in spades.

What a great picture of the two of you on your wedding day.

Jack and Kathy, could you tell us about your camp? It reminds me, from what I've seen and read, of a private island off the coast of Tampa, Fl that was used exclusively by the families of harbor ship pilots (as Tampa was then the 7th largest US port, I guess there were a few). I was able to spend a weekend there with friends and I enjoyed it. So, could you tell us about your place there? Thanks.

The camp is a little piece of heaven. It' something JF's father acquired in early 70s (JF will correct me if I'm wrong). It's on a lake in central Maine, maybe 20 miles inland from the Bar Harbor area. The lake, which is a narrow glacial lake, surrounded by large hills on all sides and around 3 miles long, and some three or four thousand acres were purchased by an elite group of ivy leaguers in the 1920s or 30s for purposes of a hunting and fishing camp and preserve. With the depression, the plans went amuck and a plan was drawn up to develop the lake by subdividing the whole thing into lots with 50 feet of lake frontage. Had that been done, it would now be lake every other lake in the vicinity - very populated and full of jet skis, motor boats and largely spoiled.

A couple of people had the money and wherewithal to put that plan to a halt and they were able to form a group to purchase the whole kit and kaboodle to form a private lake association. This has been maintained through the years, and consequently the whole lake has just 15 family compounds. The camps are all built unobtrusively so that no matter where you are on the lake, other than the ocassional dock sticking into the water, the whole thing looks completely undeveloped. It's really remarkable, again, given the level of development of *all* of the other area lakes.

Our place was the last camp sold by the association to outsiders and it was somewhat of a coup. JF had a friend whose parents had a camp there; hence the connection. He was often invited to their camp as a kid and he would come home raving about the place. One summer, his parents were able to rent someone's vacant camp, which they did for a couple of subsequent summers. In the meantime, his father, a smooth talking business man, was able to ingratiate himself with some of the officers of the lake association. Voila! He was offered a plot, and he took it and ran. First they built a small one-room cabin with a loft, and a few years later, the rather sprawling house that we now enjoy. The place is now in trust for JF and his four sisters. We've really lucked out, however, in that only one of the sisters even uses it anymore, and with us being the closest (she lives in Mass) it's at our disposal just about all of the time except for the week or two that his sister carves out for her family.

The lake is so pure that it is the back up water supply for a local municipality. Even though it's not hard to get to, once you're there it feels very remote. The road leading to the landing is private and gated (to keep out four-wheelers who love to tear the place up), and once you get to the landing, you leave your car behind, jump into the only motor boat allowed on the lake to be delivered to your cabin. Ours happens to be on the opposite end of the lake, so unless we make arrangements for a ride back, we rely on our own muscles to get around. We have an assortment of boats, from little kayaks (the favorite these days), a beautiful old wooden double ender, an aluminum canoe and a Sunfish. There is no electricity, but a generator pumps water from the lake to a holding tank up on a hill so we have running water. The house is also fitted with propane gas lamps with copper tubing out to outdoor tank and likewise, a propane cook stove and refrigerator. We even broke down and got a hot water heater a few years ago - big luxury! So, it's rustic yet very comfortable. It also has a Vermont Castings stove to warm up on chilly days and a beautiful old cast iron stove for cooking and to heat the other end of the house. Some of the camps still rely completely on their wood stoves for cooking. There's a shared culture at the lake which is great; hence the ban on motor boats and the tendency to try to keep things as they have been for years. In fact, some of the older timers were quite chagrined when the first colorful plastic kayaks started showing up on the lake.

It's a very special place, but not a place for everyone. There's not a lot of action, cell phone reception is lousy, there's no electricity for electronics and no night life except for the occasional games of charades and the annual cocktail party with other camps. There is a lot of bonding, however, between kids from different camps and a shared culture among the very diverse group of camp owners who hail from all over the country, not to mention wonderful bird watching, hiking, boating, fishing and unparalleled opportunity to relax in utter peace and quiet. I feel very blessed to have become a part of it.

Kathy, your post about the idyllic camp life reminded me of our family place when I was younger. Rough camp that grandfather built on the edge of silver sands. Calm smooth lake with fog if you rose early enough. Then the little lap,lap of the water on the shore as life started stirring. A trip down the beach to the local spring for drinking water.

Uncle arose early enough to get the wood stove burning and we would huddle around it still wrapped in our blankets while Aunt would cook us breakfast. If we waited just a bit, we could go pick 2 cupfuls of blueberries for blueberry biscuits!

The cousins slept on single beds in the attic by climbing up a pull down ladder.

Friends would gather each night on the beach for a weeny roast and toasted marshmellows when I was in my teens. On Fri nites we would be driven up our dirt road and down another to a cabin where we had the old fashiond saw and violin players who also called out the square dances. Teenagers did that? YUP! (never told back home though!!!)

We'd also sometimes take a hike up the mt on the other side of the lake or even further to a mica quarry where the water was icy cold as compared to our warm lake. And row to the next cove where the pond lilies were in bloom.

And walk down to the brook where we would fish for pickerel which always got tossed back while the male cousins caught frogs. (yup we had frog legs one night for supper - eeeew! - my aunt must have been daring!)

Later each aunt had their own camp, but it always stayed rather rustic. A water pump was finally put in which was a treat.

Ah! What memories.

It has all changed up there now. Too many camps, too many on the beach, and motors running on the lake.

I am so glad that you still have a retreat from the hussle and bussle of the life we most all lead.


oooooh....I hope I didn't just hijack! sorry...

No problem with hijacks, LL. That's a wonderful account. I sort of thought you might have had a similar experience when I saw the picture from your family place you had posted recently.

whoops!

Okay, and now for some pics. I just had to dig out this one after the discussion about JF and his role as Dad with my boys.



I love this photo. I believe this was shortly after we moved into our house. I had moved up to Maine with the boys into a rented apartment while JF stayed in Mass to finish a clerkship. When he finished, we moved together into this old house with a rent with option to buy while JF was still looking for work up here. About a year later we tied the knot