A typical day in the country can be positively relaxing after such a fast-paced trip. The morning might include a store or two, and everything always seems to orbit the kitchen.

There’s a lot of snacking, of course, because there’s always something to eat, something tempting like fresh cherries and strawberries or miodownik.

By lunchtime, I’d only made it to 1,300 steps, which was about the same number I took every morning to walk to our beloved bakery in Warsaw for breakfast pastries.

After lunch, the Boy went out to help Babcia around the yard with a bit of digging, a bit of sawing. He dug a big hole at the end of Babcia’s flower bed and explained, “When it rains, all the water will go there, and that will help the flowers. I don’t know how, but it will.”

Babcia got to chopping wood to start the evening’s fire for hot water, I lugged about 150 kg of coal toward the same goal (though my coal was for several days or even weeks of water), and the Boy continued digging.

And where was the Girl? She’d gone to reunite with a friend from two years ago. This upset the Boy, but he refused to go when Babcia had taken L for the the visit despite the fact that there would be a boy his age there. He’s always been a little shy at first, and we might have to wait a week or two before he’s willing to go play with strangers. Or maybe not: he’s always doing something unexpected, socially speaking.

When it was time to retrieve the Girl, we all headed out for a walk. The Girl, it turned out, wasn’t there. “They’ve gone out for a bike ride,” the big sister told us.

We headed out without her, only to meet her returning.

“Where are you girls going?”

“To Babcia’s, to make slime.” We brought Elmer’s glue just for that aim. Like fidget spinners, it’s the rage among L’s friends. “Here too,” A told us when she visited us our first night in Warsaw. And there’s a small change: things happen here and there at the same time. It used to be that it took some time for a fad to cross the ocean, but the internet has shrunk the world.

The Girls headed off to make slime; we continued to the river.

It didn’t take much of a commitment to make today a rest day, by and large.