Reading: The same. Don't expect anything new for the next few days.

Learning: That everyone responds to ZBD's beauty. As they ought.

Listening: NPR, when we could get it. Connecticut's radio situation hasn't improved.

Viewing: the beach.

Moving: Nope!

15 November 1999: Milford to Old Lyme to Storrs.

TJZ had gone off to work long since, but the five of us had breakfast before heading off in two different directions. As we entered the Kimberly diner, a woman spied ZBD and said, "What a beautiful little girl!" and I said yes, isn't she? as if I had a grandparent's rights. An aunt's right, anyway. The poor child is allergic to gluten, which means no wheat, and also to potatoes. So no Mickey Mouse pancake for her but a cheese omelette. The waitress needed that repeated a few times.

After breakfast, RDC and I scampered off to see his grandfather again. It was time for Grampa G's early lunch and he was pretty out of it. An attendant asked him who was visiting and, gesturing with his fork, Grampa G said "That's my nephew." That was pretty freaky. My grandmother is elderly, ill, and weak, but she's been calling me by my sister's name forever and correcting herself by the second syllable for years now (as has my mother). She's never forgotten who I am. So we didn't stay.

We checked out the new Orange library since we were close by. That's a great library. The main entrance leads into a large round area open through the second floor to a skylit dome. The whole place is painted yellow with white trim, very bright and cheery (and my favorite color combination for walls). It has a fireplace with comfy chairs just like Phoebe's old reading room and its children's room has a fireplace of its own, plus window seats. And the picture books are arranged so you can flip through their covers, like LPs, instead of seeing only their spines. These are the sure indicators of a quality bibliothèque.

As ever when in public places in Orange, I entertain a frisson of thrill that RDC's father will emerge from the woodwork. A library doesn't seem like his kind of place, though, and we ducked out safely. Further points in this library's favor are its proximity to a school (vital) and as an extra bonus Phoebe will never again enjoy, ponies next door!

Then we zipped along to Old Lyme, where I did not visit Phoebe. With AAC and SMS gone and the new building engraved in my mind and the old biography room gone, I'm not desperate to see it.

We stopped at 3SK to return the key and thank AAC, if she was there. She was there and happy to see us both and chastised me for doing our own laundry. I asked about living in Georgia and she said it was kind of nice to be anonymous but she also missed the community she's been a part of for over 20 years. I told her what happened Saturday.

On the way to the wedding I stopped at the Old Lyme Pharmacy for disposable cameras. I saw Mrs. C. I said, "Mrs. C?" She smiled at me without recognition. "Hi. I went to school with A---. Well, with S---- and J-- too, but A--- was my year. I'm LJH."
"Why hello! The last time I saw you, you were wearing glasses [explaining how she didn't recognize me] and working at the library!"
"Yes, I miss the library," stressing the last word to emphasize that I don't miss the glasses.

I miss not knowing the people in my daily life.

Then home again. BJWL's car was gone, but there was a note on the door that she'd be right back. When DEW heard the car doors slam she must have staggered to a window overlooking the driveway to check the cars, and having gone upstairs immediately, I helped her back to bed. And she needed that help. It is so dangerous for her to pass the open stairwell every time she needs to pee! Granny said something about how when we hadn't arrived when we said we would, BJWL finally had to run her errand anyway. Grrr. I told my grandmother what I told my mother, that we had planned to be there in the early afternoon, and here it was 1:45. We made it by 15 minutes.

BJWL got home from fetching a few things for DEW like a New Haven Register and cold medicine. I don't say my mother doesn't fulfill my grandmother's physical needs and never have. Her attitude while doing so is what I mind. I grew up under such an attitude myself and I know how it feels to be helpless near it. Unlike a child, my grandmother can remember and compare to this her former life, when she could make her own decisions and so forth.

I showed DEW the vacation pictures, which she enjoyed--she loves the picture of us on the Bainbridge Island ferry, which lives on her bureau in a tangle of other photographs. She wanted to give me another piece of jewelry but I couldn't find it in the boxes she indicated and reassured her I don't need jewelry to remember her by. I have her paintings and ceramics that she made with her own hands and those are much more precious to me. I would rather she give her gold jewelry to someone who'd wear it--like either of her other granddaughters.

Meanwhile RDC and BJWL were having the same conversation downstairs that I had had off in a corner with RDC's aunt the day before. At least RDC's family can afford residential care. RDC came away from that more sympathetic to my mother than he has been in the past, and I'm sure I would benefit from an hour's quiet conversation with her myself. Both of us sympathize with caring for an elderly parent--and both of us are very glad we're 2000 miles away. Well, I'm not. I wish I could spent more time with DEW, but I'm glad I'm not responsible for her daily care.

I don't know if BJWL thought residential care would be cruel to DEW. I told each of them separately I don't think the house is a good place for her and when I bade DEW farewell and came downstairs I told BJWL I fully supported her desire to find someplace safe for DEW. I also told her that that first place in Essex wasn't right--DEW doesn't need mentally challenged folks interspersed with Alzheimer's patients but folks her own age who'll play setback with her and talk and compare grandchildren, even if they can't drive or cook or lift a heavy book. She wanted to discuss it, but I told her, truthfully, that although I know and respect her desire to have these conversations face to face, I was not emotionally equipped at that moment to have that conversation. And I turned back from the car to give her another hug, and when I released her she was crying. I love the woman, I do, she just makes me crazy.

I am much more comfortable over here belittling minor personality flaws than tackling helpful issues like how to convince Granny that she shouldn't drive anymore.

We made a quick stop at the beach. I wore tights and pumps because I, in my wisdom, brought home long and short black skirts, worn with pumps, and shorts overalls, worn with Bluchers, and thus I broke a Lisa Rule of not going barefoot on the beach. It was gorgeous, even though the yellow-gray cloud I once saw only in Norwalk, much closer to New York, is now visible from my own beloved plage. As I did near Willapa in Washington, I dipped my fingers and kissed them to the sun. I spun on my toes on the firm sand below the high tide mark, embracing the sea, sun, and sky. I'll be back. That's my comfort.

RDC thought he might die if he didn't eat so we tried Cherrystones, near the beach but closed on Mondays, then Anne's Kitchen and Café in the village, also closed on Mondays, then crossed Hall's Road to the Hideaway. When it was the Elephant Walk, I washed its dishes. That was an appropriate name: if you squinted, the marshes might look like savanna and the original owner had her large collection of elephants everywhere. Now it's the Hideaway, back in the corner of the shopping center. RDC had oysters from Westbrook and didn't keel over. That's a good sign for the Sound, n'est-ce pas? And then we set off for Storrs. Days before I left, remembering we kind of had entirely forgotten to make arrangements for Monday night, I sent email to five lucky households called the Monday Night Sweepstakes. The first to respond got a visit from us and our everlasting gratitude for a place to stay. Charenton won.

I love my mother but could go on for hours detailing how she needles me (and I her). I love Charenton and its people but find it difficult to describe how. They produced my Very Best Friend in the Whole Wide World. They have a happy marriage. They also produced ALB and RPB, and my Shakespeare professor wrote a poem for their 30th anniversary with the line "They played a fine trio." They label the jars of ingredients that line their kitchen's walls in French (and the dogs' commands are in French. Couchez!). JUMB makes the best bread I have ever eaten. They cultivate a huge vegetable garden and eat its produce all winter, including this night's bite-sized baked potatoes. They tap their sugar maples and make their own syrup. And grow their own blueberries and quinces. They live in a log house without television or locks and with books upon books upon books. They love me. I am an honorable family member, they hosted my wedding, and they even like my laugh. Furthermore, they have the best window seat, lined with sheepskins and shaded by the grape arbor (did I mention they make their own wine?).

Entering the house, I also entered APB's embrace. Then JUMB's. There was much rejoicing, even by the dogs, who pretended not to have been pet for years. There was chat and warmth and cider. Charenton through and through. Then more honorary family members dropped by, a Senegalese couple and their two sons, one of whom was but days old and had had his baptism there two days before. I couldn't believe their older son was five. JUMB assisted at his birth and learned to say "Push!" in Wolof. And I am so glad JUMB was there, because Degeune's Wolof and French are fluent but her English was mostly absent, scary when you deliver your first child at an English-speaking hospital. She's learned it with her older son, though, and so now I didn't feel like the monolingual oaf I am as I admired the younger''s sleeper suit.

JUMB and APB discussed what wine to have with supper. "A nice western Australian merlot would be good," APB hinted.
"Western Australian?" I asked. "To match the guests?"
"What guests?" asked APB, coy as coy. When we set the table for six, though, the gig was up. The Beasts arrived and there was more rejoicing, and then ALBF as well as I added a seventh place. The Beasts lost the sweepstakes (but had won it over the Fourth), so it was great that Charenton had them. I regretfully missed the event that added the F to ALB last Labor Day, and this night to make up for it I asked for and got a good long detailed photographic tour of the wedding. And a fireplace and two dogs and JUMB's bread with odd cheeses. What a great evening. Then more hot-tubbing, this time with better stars and no bathing suits, and bed again.