Reading: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, though not noticeably

Water: Connecticut River estuary

10 June 2002: Cygnets

Monday I was very good and left Storrs. When I discovered that my father's visit to Connecticut overlapped with mine, we planned to spend Monday afternoon together. Before that I had wanted to invite everyone down to the lake for the day, but even at the time I knew it would be too cold for normal people anyway. I scurried down 395 and across 82 and down 156 and nipped into Nehantic State Forest, whose road is the worst I can ever remember it. No one was there, always a blessing, and I began to wade in, chattering, chastised myself, and tried again with a running start. I told myself sternly that anyone who voluntarily immersed herself in the Strait of Juan de Fuca could not reasonably have problem with her favorite lake, whose water was probably over 60 anyway. I guess this temperature because several days later Long Island Sound was posted as 60 something, and the lake was likely warmer.

At PGN--oh, that reminds me, be right back--I discovered that whatever rumor I read wherever alleging that 06371 would be the June focus of National Geographic's ZIP code feature lied. I dashed off in the previous sentence to do some sleuthing. At Center School, I talked to the librarian for a while about The Fate of Persephone, which sold on 12 June for $600+ K. She didn't think it was appropriate subject matter for an elementary school library. I think Greek mythology can be toned up or down for any age. That particular painting did scare the pants off me, but it did get me interested in Greek mythology, or maybe not. It was the colorful Bullfinch's next to the UFO books that got me, but I like to think I enjoyed recognizing the subject matter after reading it.

I hadn't been in Center School in many many years. I peeped into the gym, which is much smaller than it used to be. The wainscotting along the hallways used to be a little above shoulder height--I remember running my hand along it as I walked from kindergarten to the gym or the cafeteria--but had been lowered to hip height sometime before I graduated high school. I didn't remember the gym being so small, however. And in the lobby I had a shock of memory. On the left side hangs a framed quilt of needleworked versions of American colonial and state flags. In 1976 I was in fourth grade and this was a project probably all the upper grades participated in. Just as I can point you to the particular screws I installed on the Charenton deck--a couple of crookedy ones near the ramp--I immediately remembered that I had worked on a stripe in the "Don't Tread on Me" flag. The red comprises several crooked Xs. (The quality of my craftsmanship apparently did not change between 1976 and--when, 1992 or '93?--the Charenton deck.)

Before noon I landed at my aunt and uncle's, where my father and uncle lounged under the broad red maple in the backyard. What an incredibly gorgeous day. I admired my uncle's garden and remembered his rows of sunflowers--no squirrels for him--and then Dad and I went in to see my aunt. Who looks, all things considered, pretty good. Inside, my father and I talked with my aunt for a while, grandchildren stories and more Old Lyme gossip and she was reading Maeve Binchy, whom I haven't but who reminds me of Rosamund Pilcher, and she had read Shell-Seekers. We had a pleasant chat and then my father's brother showed up, and I don't know if my father knows how uncomfortable I feel around him or what but I was glad when he suggested leaving soon after that.

Ferry Road is always a good place to go with my father, because his grandmother used to live hard by Ferry Tavern, which burned down when I was a tot, and he crossed the river on the train bridge when he was a teenager to go to movies in Old Saybrook, until this one time the other boy who said he knew the train schedule turned out to be almost tragically but happily only comedically wrong.

Swans are not native to the Connecticut shore. As the story goes, once upon a time someone imported a pair of mute swans from England or the Netherlands because they'd look so sexy on his estate. The non-native descendants of this allegedly single pair are destroying the estuary and the shoreline from Clinton to New London, eating the natives' habitat and being generally pissy. As are all swans. They have a nasty bite. Anyway, so the DEP addles all but two eggs of any nest it finds.

The pair of swans we saw had eluded the DEP: they had eight cygnets. The currents in the delta, and particularly around the train bridge piles, are harsh, and the little ones churned their little mustard-colored legs as fast as they could go to keep up. Except one, who decided it was tired and climbed aboard a parent's back. Sometimes it ducked its head between the parent's wings and was completely hidden; sometimes it stuck its head out and looked like a freak of nature. Then one of its siblings decided that was a keen idea but instead of boarding the other parent, joined the first. So one swan parent (are they sexually dimorphic? If they are, they hide it well) had two babies on it, one between the wings and another on the base of its tail. Some people fail to find the telling of this as cute as we did. And my uncle said the five yellower ones were older, not the other sex, than the grayer ones.

Our next stop was the river overlook where the original Baldwin bridge was. My uncle had mentioned it, saying not a lot of people went there maybe because the walk was too steep. First my father drove up this little gravel road--Mapquest labels it, appropriately, Old Bridge Road--nothing but a couple of envious houses. Hm. Envious river views, but a little too close to the highway. What we should have done was park in the commuter lot and hike up the hill toward the river, and I don't know what my father was thinking but instead he turned onto the highway entrance ramp. The entire hill is fenced off, and we didn't start legally at the base of the hill at the gate. I myself wouldn't've thought of the entrance ramp, but my father did. Almost in time to merge with the highway traffic, he spottted another gate in the chainlink fence, up a steep gravel slope. He gunned his rental car up this while I sat in the passenger seat stunned--if my father crossed the train bridge at peril of life, limb, and drowning to go to movies as a teenager, he hasn't acted like that since that I've every known. Anyway, he spared us, or himself and his knee, most of the hill. I asked him just one thing, that when we left, we should please turn right, get onto the highway and turn around in Essex and not to exit the on-ramp.

The river overlook was interesting. I knew about prehistorical strong-armed canoe crossings and rope ferries since colonial times and the steam ferry that launched from the end of Ferry Road, but I didn't know that the pre-1948 bridge accommodated trolley cars. So we read all the plaques, about the bridges and about the geography. For all I fear for his sight, my father did react quickly when he saw the gate to pull into--for official business and grass-cutting, I'm sure--and spotted an osprey nest at the top of the utility tower where power lines cross the river. We had seen another osprey feeding its young in a nest on a stand on one of the islands, too. To this next we got to see an osprey arriving, fish in hand. Fish in foot.

He wondered whether "that ice cream place" might be open yet, and had he really forgotten Hallmark's name? The Silo Inn now has some ridiculous other name that I'll never use, as has Hundred Acres, and the Lymelight is long gone, but Hallmark's is an ever fixèd mark, and I suggested it was our moral imperative to go there. I ordered a small mocha chip on a sugar cone and he a medium, um, whatever unnatural flavor. But Hallmark's serves only only small and large, so he got a large. I am not proud that I had a moment of thinking "But that's not fair, he'll have ice cream left when I'm done!" And then I was glad, because I hadn't brought any Lactaid with me and a "small" cone might have only one scoop, but by jiminy it ain't small. RSH must be out of practice with cones; his hands--though thankfully not his face--began to resemble a small child's before I scampered back--without spilling my own cone--for a bowl and spoon.

In the later afternoon I headed up to Coventry to see RPR and her house. And her dog, who is the size of a miniature horse. I think taller. One of the chief things I dislike about new houses is that they have no windows. Often a side wall will have no windows at all, or just one upstairs. This is not the case here. They're big windows, floor to ceiling it feels like, and--very sexy--they're the kind you can tilt out of their frames so you can wash the outside from the inside. The main floor is arranged so that the guests can gather in the kitchen, or not, and the hosts keep within sight and sound of them in the living room, dining room, or--I don't know what to call it--the big friendly area between kitchen and living room. There's a loft over the garage that begs to be a playroom, and a brook and a huge boulder in the front yard, and a particularly attractive staircase that we primed, one coat Monday night and another Tuesday night.

One story I have not been able to tell as funnily to anyone else but her is The Story of the Garage Door Opener. The day after the not-theft, my father told me over the phone that an electric opener should have a handle to pull to disengage the door from the motor, so you can open it manually. Maybe that handle had something to do with the thief's egress? I had never noticed such a thing but trotted out to look. And there it was. So I pulled it. Because, you know, shiny! Only then did I bother to read the directions that were stapled (stapled?!) into the brick by the person-door (which my father calls, much less amusingly to me, "personnel door"). Because of course I didn't know how to reset the door on the track. I thought maybe I should open it. So I did. Then I couldn't close it. It was open about 18 inches, for all and sundry to help themselves to our bikes and stuff. Many, many kinds of nonchalantly, I returned to the house to get my other glasses, thinking that perhaps the sunglasses were why I couldn't see whatever it was I should see. On the way out, I picked up some chard stems from the cutting board and the container of compost, because RDC hates to deal with the compost (and I was probably already thinking of Ways to Suck Up). I was halfway to the compost bin when he called, irritated, from the house, that he needed those, they were separate from the leaves because he cooks them longer, ya ya ya. So I returned the stems, contrite, and again examined the garage door. I had no idea. So I went back into the house to face the music.

"It's almost time for dinner," RDC said.

"No, first comes the part where you get really angry at me."

"I'm sorry I raised my voice. It's just that I've told you before about cooking the stems longer."

"No, it's not that. This is something else you have to see."

So he came out and was pissed and had enough time to tell me I'd have to empty the garage and arrange for a repairperson myself before spotting that this doohickey had to go here and this and that and it was fine.

RPR went through college with RDC and it is a comfort to tell stories that don't necessarily reflect well on either him or me to someone who understands both his perfectionism and my "Ooh, shiny!"

Tuesday night (skipping Tuesday day just for a moment) Sooby and JHRDM came over too, the latter bringing her baby girl, who is enormous and lovely and has a great name that I like much more than any alias. In fact I can't think of an alias for her. So anybaby. Large pretty baby with big eyes.