Well, it's been an interesting couple of days. I did make it to the MSU pool yesterday, and I have to say, I once again felt like a time-traveler . . .

The deal was, I stayed in Lansing because one of my colleagues gave a poetry reading at the MSU library. So in between my meeting that ended at 3:00 and the 7:30 poetry reading, I first took my bike on the River Trail:



. . . which was really neat. And then I headed to the pool . . .


I love that pool. It reminds me of the pool in Linz where my mother and I hung out when we went to Austria the summer after my father died. The best part is that it's open until November 1 weather permitting . . . Yay!!

When I was locking my bike up at the racks outside the IM, it dawned on me that I was riding the very same bike that I always used to ride when I went to that pool when I was in school there . . . the Sekai that I bought in 1979, about eight months after I first met Emil . . . the very same bike that we used to call the Peewee Mobile (after Peewee's Big Adventure, natch) because when I was pregnant with Charlie I couldn't ride with drop handlebars, so I put regular (but very old, curvy) handlebars on it.

And when I got to the pool, it dawned on me that it was the very first pool Charlie ever "swam" in - when he was about four weeks old (as soon as I could exercise), I got a little styrofoam baby float, meant for much older babies, obviously; they were spozed to be able at least to sit up . . . I cut up some foam rubber to make a kind of "booster seat" at the bottom, set him in, then stuffed foam rubber all around him, put a hat on him, and used the float as a kickboard . . .

And then I rode the Sekai to the library . . . locked it in the Usual Place, and went up to the reading. I was in mortal fear that the Library Police were going to come get me because of some unpaid fine . . . then I remembered that they made me pay the fines before they gave me my diploma. When I came out, I felt as if I were supposed to ride home to the apartment on Oakhill (you know, the place where they deliver my LCC mail . . . ) It was all too weird for words.

Before all of that, though, I did get a picture of Lansing House, which is where Kevin and Jeff lived:



Those storage bins were not there when Jeff and Kevin lived there. As Jeff pointed out, Kevin would never have allowed it. (I wonder how he would have gotten rid of them, hmmm? Bonfire, is my guess . . . )

And here's a picture of Emma, either on her way to school or to the Left Bank in Paris in 1922, I'm not sure which. (Note especially the lightning bolt earrings.) That skirt looked short to me until I remembered that I'd worn 'em just as short:



If anyone has any doubts that we have to remain in Ann Arbor for her sake, the picture should dispel them . . . where else could this child possibly live at this point in her life???