30th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

Celebrating by doing a (routine) bowel cancer screening test, upstairs, and, over on another continent, having the notorious BECKET BOUNDARY AGREEMENT finally signed, both events consistently hard to top in the memorable anniversary stakes. DK has hopefully put a bottle of Adnam's best bubbly on ice, after which we will go out to dinner, providing I leave enough time to get out of these paint clothes and get the Farrow & Ball Castle Grey out from under my nails. Cupboards in Piano Room finally getting my attention, having had the primer put on a year and a half ago and then, like most everything else to do with my life in England, it all went on hold while I tore full speed ahead into Overseas Parent Duty. But I love painting. And am painting these cupboards to look old and worn and vaguely Norwegian, sort of like me. 

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Peg rings this morning, all in a dither.

"Well, this is the first morning I haven't woken up crying. Something just wonderful happened yesterday. I still can't get over it. Want to hear?"

"Of course! What? What?" I'm thinking somebody on the Emmy committee saw her website and now wants to present her with an Honorary one at the very least or she's been invited to perform Ethel and Albert at The White House with Obama playing Albert, this is how excited she is.

"Well, Laurie [in Cincinnati] was going though old boxes of her grandparents' things and you'll never guess what she found."

"What?"

"Guess!"

"Mother, I have no idea."

"A letter from her grandmother to her mother saying how she ran into us that time in Delphi! In Greece! 'And standing  there, you'll won't believe this, was Peg Lynch!' she says right there in her letter!"

There's a pause here I'm sensing I'm supposed to fill. 

"Ah," I say. Instead of "Yeah? Big deal. So what?" 

"Well don't you see what this means???" Peg's breathless with this development.

"No."

"It means," Peg says, "that I was telling the truth! That I hadn't made the story up! When you and I were in the amphitheatre and I looked up and said, 'Well for gosh sakes, isn't that Helen Hughes? What's she doing here, of all places!' And I went over and said 'Why, Helen!' And we laughed and said what a small world it is! Now everyone will believe me! It's been verified!" 

Oh boy. Maybe this is all it takes to get you excited at 97. This is a non story, to boot. We were in Greece when I was 12 and we ran into someone's mother from Connecticut who Peg hardly knew and I didn't know from Adam and we exchanged gosh what fun pleasantries for five minutes. That's it. No story. But now she has it "verified" and can sleep nights and wake up happy because no one's going to say "Oh yeah? Well I have it on good authority that Helen Hughes was never IN Delphi and in fact on that very date was in fact getting her hair done at Emile's on East 57th St in New York City, and I have witnesses!"

"That's great, Mama." 
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