November 6, 2026– Hana slept a lot this afternoon, and let me know later that she missed her mother. She finally broke down crying, calling “Momma, momma”, after dinner. Yunhee returned home after Hana went to sleep this evening, so they will have a fine reunion tomorrow.
Hana has been delightful, comical, throughout the last three days. I sensed she was trying to be strong for her parents. It all became too much, this evening, and I ‘m glad she both let it out and let her father and me comfort her. She felt better after crying.
HANA’S NOTE-I started to wonder if Mommy would ever come home. That’s why I got scared. Daddy and Papa told me she would come back tonight. I hope she’s here tomorrow when I wake up.
EXPANDING CIRCLES: Massachusetts- The Bay State is where it all began for me. Home was first Melrose, then Saugus- for eighteen years. College and university found me living in Beverly, Amherst, Northampton and South Deerfield, but Saugus was always home. Over the years, I’ve visited every part of Massachusetts, save Nantucket. I don’t feel out of place anywhere in the state.
The Turf: Western Massachusetts is covered by two distinct mountain ranges: The Taconics and the Berkshires/Hoosacs, the latter being an extension of the Green Mountains. The Taconics include the state’s two highest peaks: Mount Greylock and Mount Everett. The Connecticut Valley, or Pioneer Valley, lies east of the Berkshires. The Eastern Highlands cover the central and northeastern parts of Massachusetts, including Cape Ann. The southeastern part of the state, including Cape Cod, is Coastal Plain. Ponds and bogs cover the southeast’s interior. The offshore islands-Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, the Elizabeth Islands and Monomoy, were formed by glacial moraines. Massachusetts is drained by the Housatonic, Hoosic, Connecticut, Merrimack, Quinebaug, Blackstone, and Charles Rivers, as well as by their tributaries.The state is bounded by several bays: Massachusetts, Cape Cod, Buzzards and Mount Hope.
First Nations- Massachusetts is the ancestral home of the Mahican, Massachusett, Nipmuc, Pennacook, Pocomtuc, and Wampanoag peoples. The Wampanoag have two Federally-recognized reservations: Mashpee (western Cape Cod and Taunton, in Bristol County) and Gay Head (western Martha’s Vineyard). The Nipmuc have two state-designated reservations, both in Worcester County.
Massachusetts is famed as the site of the first Thanksgiving, yet that initial bond between First Nations and European settlers did not hold. Although the original English colonists, known as Pilgrims, had respectful relationships with the Indigenous people, the Puritans who came nine years later regarded the “Indians” as inferior. The southeast figured prominently in the Pequot War of 1636, King Philip’s War, fought in 1675-76 and with the forced relocation of First Nations people from the Praying Towns of Massachusetts Bay to several islands in Boston Harbor, during the winter of 1675-76, relations between the government of Massachusetts bay Colony, on the one hand and the Indigenous people and those settlers who wanted to live in peaceful integration with them, on the other, continued to be tense. As it were, large numbers of those people who were sent to live on the harbor islands died of disease that winter. In 1704, during Queen Anne’s War between France and England, a party of French and Mohawk/Abenaki warriors staged a retributive raid on the village of Deerfield, killing 47 villagers and taking 100 captives. These were forced to walk towards Montreal, but not all of them made it. The Deerfield Massacre was the nadir of Indigenous-English relations in New England, albeit having been instigated by the French.
Where I most feel at home: Saugus,Wakefield, Boston, Mashpee, Amherst, Gloucester, Lynn
Where I most feel at peace- Breakheart Reservation(Saugus/Wakefield), Quabbin, Rockport, Mount Greylock, Egremont
NEXT: Vermont
