Marvelous Massachusetts Musketeer

In a recent post, I mentioned that I am in a friends group that call ourselves the Three Musketeers. I ended the post with the image below. Two of us attended the celebration of the third, when the anniversary of his 30 years of ordination fell near his 60th birthday. I sat with our friend Madhawa, and then left with him, to go spend the remainder of my Massachusetts trip with his family.

After Romain’s celebration in Billerica, Mads took me to his home in Western Massachusetts. Most of the time of our friendship, the three of us have been without partners. Romain chose to partner with his faith, of course. But Mads and I took a long time to find our person. We both now have families that we have brought into the trio. I brought Pedro and his twins to join Kellen and me. Mads met Udani and got married, and now they have Kai.

Life has been so full that I had never had a chance to really spend time with Udi and Kai till this recent trip to Boston. We spent a birthday in Boston in 2022, when I got to meet Udi and Kai for the first time. They helped Pedro and me move, back in 2023, and so I was able to spend a little more time. But finally, I would get days instead of hours.

The first day was birthday party day. I was invited to join my friends at the party of a little one in the Sri Lankan community of friends out in Western Massachusetts. We cooked all morning, and Udi practiced making a delicious treat called imbul kiribath, of milk rice balls with a sweet coconut filling. She made us eat them for breakfast to taste test. It was a task I would happily complete every morning.

There was much more food at the birthday party and I had fun trying everything. The Sri Lankans were careful to point out the spicy dishes and warn me. That’s sweet, but I live with a Mexican. Sri Lankan spicy is nothing to Mexican spicy – at least from what I have been exposed to so far.

One of the families had just moved into a new home, and several of the other families were invited to come and continue the birthday celebrations. This was much more fun than the party venue. The kids all ran outside. The men got out the whiskey and sat around the dining table. The women were either in the kitchen or the TV room watching soaps. I wandered between groups, trying to see and learn everything I could. Hardly a word of English was spoken the entire time, and it was so cool. More food was prepared, and again they carefully pointed out the spicy things, which were barely spicy to me. I need to make a mental note to be careful when we serve food to these guys, so we don’t accidentally surprise them with our peppers.

Back at the house that night, we made plans to go to Mystic, Connecticut the next day. I always forget how small states are over on the East side. You can bop around for a couple of hours and cross multiple U.S. states. Anyway, the trip to Mystic, down on Long Island Sound, would be only an hour and a half.

The next morning I was complaining to them over coffee. I am not much of a cook, but there are a couple of dishes I do well. My biggest brag is that I make the best baking powder biscuits of anyone. But Pedro does not like biscuits. He never ate them growing up, doesn’t care for them now. I take a piping hot batch out of the oven, and he will not touch them. I think it’s bizarre. Mads helped with a little perspective: “He didn’t grow up with them. It must be cultural. We, for example, grew up loving biscuits. Possibly because of colonization by the British. We love biscuits.”

With that as encouragement, off to the kitchen I went! They didn’t ask; I volunteered. The entire batch was devoured before the biscuits cooled, and I was made whole.

Mads got Kai ready for soccer practice and Udi and I left. We had the chance to talk and talk in the car on the way down and the way back. She told me about her jobs since law school, and how it took so long to find joy in employment and she has finally found a fit. She feels more self-assured and more able to express the joy that grows inside her. She talked about how she loves her son, how she hears what kind of boy he is from teachers and other parents, and it makes her so proud. She told me her continued dreams for her home, in making it a true expression of herself and her family. The house is hers, she explained, and the yard is his, to do with as they will. She talked about having her mother-in-law stay for a long time, who only just recently left, and they all loved her so much, and Kai cried when she left.

We laughed together, and talked about our men, and being in relationships, and parenting. I am glad to have this powerful, funny, wicked smart woman in my life.

I told Udi about the movie “Mystic Pizza” with a very young Julia Roberts. When we arrived in town, we saw the movie’s namesake right away. It was the first place we stopped and explored. Inside, there are photos of the actors during shooting. Udi bought me a souvenir from there, so I could carry away a memory of the day.

We explored the cute little New England town.

In the center of town, I was mesmerized by some giant concrete blocks. I stared at them a long time till I realized they were part of the bridge. I remained fascinated.

When we walked back into town, we followed the other side of the bridge, and I finally saw an information board. A sign mounted on the bridge explains that it was built in 1922, is called a bascule bridge, and is listed with the National Park Service as a Historical Engineering Record. “Two 40-horsepower electric motors pivot the 85-foot movable span, weighing 660 tons, which is counterbalanced by two, 230-ton concrete weights.”

We went home and Udi made dinner while the boys relaxed on the couch. I asked Mads to give me a tour of the outside property, which is quite large. They have gardens, a lawn, a patio and pool and Mads has installed some additional landscaping in the front. It was fun to see how excited he was to learn about different kinds of landscaping choices and hear what their plans were for the future of their property.

He also explained how much he enjoys his neighbors, and how they feel good in their community. That makes me so happy. Mads has been living in an apartment forever! When he married Udi, they stayed there. With the three of them, it was getting crowded. They needed this new space.

Mads made gifts for us with his 3D printer. It is a wonderful tool. I had never seen one in operation before, and it was fascinating to watch it build things by placing layer after layer. It builds supports all around, for layers that extend horizontally. Then when it’s done, a person has to break off the supports. In the image of Gandalf, for example, his arms and sleeves hover in the air. But the first version had supports between his sleeves and his legs, that Mads broke off for me.

I said goodbye to Udani and Kai and and my friend Madhawa drove me to the airport so we could spend that last bit of time together. We were foolish and talked politics the whole way. Mads is very involved in community building and protection, and conflict solutions around the world. He is tapped in to governments and leaderships and cultures in many places, and that’s what we talked of.

It was the wrong choice because I was all the way home when I realized that what I really wanted to talk about was him. How was he recovering from the loss of his father – how was he finding the way to move on? How has life changed the longer he is a father and husband and family man in Western Massachusetts? What new whiskeys had he tried – no wait, I think he said he was in a phase of trying something new. Was it brandy? I’d like to tell him about some of the Mezcals that Pedro and I have been enjoying. How does he negotiate the distance between his passion for democracy and his MAGA neighbor’s passions, when they enjoy each other’s company and work on garden projects together? How is the Sri Lankan economy doing and how is it impacting his family there? What’s new in his work with University of Massachusetts? What’s it like to watch his boy grow so fast and what kind of a boy is Kai turning out to be?

I wanted also to tell him that this time, for the first time, I can feel a tight partnership in his marriage, and some deep love and appreciation there. I want to know their tips and lessons. I wanted to say how I adore his wife and his child and his home and his constant yearning to contribute in an intentional way to improve humanity. But I missed my perfect chance.

Still, we are inseparable Musketeers, and I will get another chance. Right now, I am trying to use their son’s obsession with elephants to tempt them to spend time in Portland again. The Oregon Zoo has Elephant Lands, a 6.2-acre, $57 million habitat that has resulted in multiple births of elephants in captivity and I think it’s just the thing to lure them back over here. Of course, Romain and Mads never stop trying to lure me to move back to the East coast, so it’s a fair tug of war. 🙂