The boys and I spent the week leading up to July 4 at Lake Como, while Monica returned to Rhode Island to settle into being a camp counselor.  

I telecommuted to work.  (I was dismayed to find that the new Macbook lacks a modem, so a couple of times a day I had to bike down to the ice cream shop in town to use their wifi.  Usually the boys came along and I bought us a meal or a snack.)  It was a cool, wet week -- not socked-in rainy, but every day there were showers interspersed with sun.  Into the 40's at night and the 60's during the day.  Porter tried fishing a little and we took the canoe out.  They read a lot, played games, biked, built and re-built the Heroscape gameboard, and bided their time until their aunts and grandparents arrived on Friday.

During the week, I noticed how Porter has been growing lately -- becoming more self-sufficient -- more self-contained.  Bicycling off around the Lake; helping out with meals; even going off to the Villa Como by himself for a piece of cheesecake and a game of pinball.  When Chris, Cathie, Mom and Dad came up for the weekend, he and I took turns lighting the fireworks that Chris had brought.

I was proud of the way that both of the boys handled themselves in the canoeing upset.  Neither panicked.  When I saw Porter float away from us in the Delaware, I knew that he was a good swimmer and he would be making for the shore.  And afterwards I could tell that he had added to his own stock of self-confidence -- that he was a little surprised and even impressed at how he had mastered his own fear and panic.  And how he hadn't looked for anyone to rescue him.