Two Years and Counting

The weather in New Haven when I was with Christopher was pretty cold but it warmed up soon after. The following Monday was Veteran's Day holiday (remembering ex-military types not just old people) and warm sunshine lured me out for a walk by the sea a few minutes from the house. It was perfect and I had the whole of the private Bailey's beach and the Rejects beach (for those not admitted to Bailey's Beach club) to myself and the occasional sea gull, standing on one leg and giving me a 'a good ignoring.' There were great banks of sea weed thrown up by recent storms and hundreds of stranded jelly fish, some completely transparent and some with a pinkish tinge.  I gather that the Mansions up this end of Bellevue avenue not only have automatic access to Bailey's beach but are also allowed to gather seaweed - a real boon I should imagine. I had the beach to myself the following weekend too, but that time the solitude was easier to understand as it was a grey cold day, with a chilling wind. There were just a couple of miserable looking fishermen down on the rocks of the point I scrambled past on the way back to the house. Some interesting shells 10 inches across  - some kind of large crab ? 

The contrast in weather from day to day is very striking. On Saturday the day before my walk on the Beach I did the usual hike down Bellevue Avenue, stopping off at the China Tea House at Marble House for coffee on the way back. It seemed almost summery and people were sitting outside. Whatever the weather, it's a nice place to read one's Wall Street Journal - and the coffee's not bad. Cherry's is the nearest Liondog, and he likes a good pat 

Liondogs apart, there's a surprising amount of nature around here. The weekend before I visited the Norman Bird Sanctuary and walked some of its extensive trails. Not that many birds emerged into sight - there were still a lot of leaves on the trees, but lots of rocks to scramble over  on the trees and other things to see. Including another of those charming little family burial grounds, with delightful if sad 18th Century tombstones. Incidentally, I was pleased to track down some information on little Phoebe Marsh who died in 1729 and who I came across last time;  - I was right she was a baby, born 16th June but didn't survive. Her father was a shoe-maker. What you can find out on the web is amazing although it has to be said that the Americans are really good  at preserving their history, and make looking up such things very easy.   

Of course, today it's now Cherry's second anniversary. It's hard to believe that two whole years have passed since we last spoke - but the fact that I still talk to her pictures makes it seem much less than that. To some extent she's still present and I am sure that she always will be. In the course of the mammoth family history project on which I am engaged alongside everything else I came across this in one of the weekly letters which Grandma Till sent us: 'If Dad was alive we would have been married 56 years today - a sad day for me, one never gets used to it.' Paradoxically, I hope Grandma was right.

So on my way home from College today I popped into the Zabriskie Memorial Church of St John the Evangelist right by the water to light some candles for Cherry and write it up in their book, then sat down and looked at pictures of her on my phone. This is one of the nicest ones of her taken in her last few, very brave months.  Got a bit dewy-eyed inevitably.
 

It's an attractive church inside - 1893 full of US naval associations but very English Anglo-Catholic, the 4 patron saints of the UK in the windows, a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, a capital carved from a stone taken from Whitby Abbey and so on and so forth. Cherry would have enjoyed visiting it, but now in a way she has.