They were here for the July 4th weekend, my only son and his family, and my wife Loretta, at my urging, had ordered steak dinners so she wouldn’t spend all her time cooking. Ben’s delicatessen delivered a superb dinner, and our sweet granddaughter, too young still to take part in adult conversations, entertained herself on her mother’s i-phone.
That’s a no-no in polite adult circles, but there were no companions her age, so her mother relented. We talked about “my ship coming in,” a New England phrase for sure, when the clipper ships ran the China trade. The thing is, though, that my clipper ship got lost, and my writing pursuits never produced the big bonanza I had hoped for.
Loretta teases me about that. Well, the friendly teasing companionship is worth the effort I put in, anyway.
Civilization 