Hyannis, Massachusetts

Our little villa was a sweet place to wake up in!  Having arrived in the dark of night, we crawled through the twists and turns of the cobblestoned alleys.  We ran inside, up and down the stairs, and Katherina exclaimed that it felt a little like Christmas morning.  For never having been able to share a Christmas morning with THIS cousin, it felt pretty invigorating.  We threw our bags inside and crawled to the ocean.  The rhythmic crashing of the waves felt ancestral, being so close to Plymouth, Massachusetts where our Pilgrim family landed in 1620.

The rain that greeted us in the morning told us that our day at the beach would have to wait, but luckily Mia had already researched what our rainy day expedition should be… a trip into Hyannis and the John F. Kennedy museum  (http://jfkhyannismuseum.org).  It was just a bonus that the Kennedy Museum was connected to the Cape Cod Hall of Fame Baseball Museum (http://v2.capecodbaseball.org).  I have always been fascinated by the Kennedy Family, and my love for baseball is… well, it is legendary!

I am so glad that I had a chance to go to this museum.  So often we think, maybe just I think … that the Kennedys are like royalty in a lot of ways, but what I took away from this experience is that they are regular people with big dreams inspired by this beautiful place.  “The sea and shores of Hyannis Port inspired our 35th President like no other place on earth.”  I looked at all of these pictures of the Kennedys out on the water and having family celebrations.   

Places do inspire us, don’t they?  So many writers are associated with the places where they live and write because the settings of their novels become like another character in the story.  I feel that way when I am at Miles Pond.  When I am at the Pond, I always want to share it with others.  I always think about how it would be a great place for a retreat center or a Boy Scout camp.   

When we visit these inspirational places, we want to be out in them, and my next favorite part of this outing had to be when we picnicked in the rain out of the back of the car.  I guess we do this in Scouts all the time, but this repast felt extraordinary and special.    I discovered the American Dream, a powerful igniter of ambition for the past generation, all over again in downtown Hyannis this day through the eyes of my Swedish cousins.  It’s okay to dream… Mark Twain once said, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”