July in Florida

The problem with going to Boston on the Fourth is, you have to come home soooner or later. It's July, and it's hot. Danged hot. We don't get 100-degree days here like in some other parts of the country but when the humidity is 99 percent the "hot as" factor is about 300 degrees. I mowed my front and back lawns today - don't usually mow them both on the same day in the summer - and I'm sitting here recuperating. Good news: The crape myrtle I planted a year ago is finally showing blooms. I'll put up a photo later. Bad news: The key lime tree has about six limes on it and no evidence of wanting to bear any more this summer. But she's a tough tree, having survived a freeze and two close calls from hurricanes, so there's always hope. After what she went through last summer she's entitled to rest, like I am right now.

Fourth of July in Boston

Of all the places to be on the Fourth of July, I can't think of a better place than in Boston, home of the Tea Party, Paul Revere, and all that. Never mind that they throw a party on the banks of the Charles River complete with the most amazing fireworks synchronized to music from the Boston Pops. Never mind that our twins live there and their siblings think of Boston as a second home town. That's just part of the charm of being there. On the Fourth, this is where it started, here and in other places like Philadelphia, but who wants to go there?

on seeing your daughters turn 30

We aren't old enough for this. Our twins weren't born that long ago and their mother and I aren't old enough to have children that old. But they were, and we are, and they've celebrated one of those birthdays with a zero in it. Good news: They won't have to worry about such a traumatic event for another ten years.

When they were six months old I met a father of six-year-old twin boys who said he felt sorry for me. It doesn't get better, he said. It only gets different. He was wrong. It got different, for sure, but it always got better. Daughters are great; twin girls as good as ours are more than twice as great.

When I turned thirty I'd finished law school, and I had a job with the state legislature that seemed like a good job at the time. Our twins have finished college. One then earned a master's degree while the other completed the requirements to become an R.N. Both have jobs which are much more valuable to our society than the job I had. They are sweet and caring young ladies who know how to enjoy life, too. I am sure my parents were proud of me, but they couldn't have been prouder than their mother and I are of our little girls.