TRAVEL: The East Coast Spring and a Family Story

 Elizabeth Pinneo was a tall elegant beauty of 22 when she married Dayton Ogden in 1942. A teacher at a Manhattan private school, she and Dayton, a strikingly handsome naval lieutenant commander,  fell in love and like so many lovers trapped by war, married soon, wrote letters, and waited for an end to the unimaginable events     

they lived through. Dayton, their first son, was born in 1945, and John Cabot, the second, destined to become my husband, was born in 1946. 

In 1949, so many former GIs like my own parents and the Ogdens, bought homes.
They found a beautiful growing town,   

Bridle  Path

New Canaan, Connecticut, far out from Manhattan but a town that looked like and would be, an American dream.  The children of war's postponed fulfillment were born and families raised during those years, in Better Homes and Gardens houses that sheltered the offspring of The Greatest Generation. This is the house they lived in,on Bridle Path, where all 4 of their children grew up and went out into the much-changed world.

 John, that second child, became my mid-life "trophy" husband. Our marriage is an engaged, rich, and unexpected blessing, built wisely upon our early life mistakes.  He is about age 2 1/2, in this photo, at the beach where the family went frequently, ocean-lovers all. He maintains the same slightly puzzled and amused expression to this day.

New Canaan Cemetery

I flew back to New Canaan, when Elizabeth, "Lib", to me, at age 94, had a serious fall and entered a care center. I had time with her every day,sitting easily and sometimes quietly; comfortable chats with Lib, and family that revealed her sense of humor and quantities of memories, and her pleasure in her visiting family.

One of the sweetest things about Lib is how much she loves flowers and the natural world. I do, too, and it was an unexpected gift to me to see an East Coast springtime for the first time, in its almost shocking fullness. 

The care center's attentive and kind routines,and visits from her loving family stabilized Lib, and she got a little better each day. The other marvel, unfolding each day, was the cultivated glory of the gardens of the town.     

Rhododendron

Spirea

John and his brothers and sisters have deep roots here. Houses around the town center are small charming Queen Annes and Victorians, in the wooded areas grassy swaths on which mini-estates rest, and an occasional Philip Johnson modern is visible through the trees.

We had several warm sunny days, each with a freshness to delight us. We sat out with Lib watching the fountain, birds, and a deer which nibbled at willow crudités across the stream.

We used to call this bleeding heart in the Midwest

Bluebells?

I don't remember the Midwestern springs of my childhood well, except for the delight of bird-watching and going barefoot at last.  


I don't think I wore shoes much in summer at all. So I'm substituting the memory of the yard gardens of New Canaan to be the iconic image of springtime to hold in mind from now on.

I feel like a prequel has been added to my life image bank.

Forsythia

The names of these flowers and trees, however, are familiar to me from the poetry I have read

celebrating the return of springtime:

   

Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Edward Arlington Robinson come to mind.

Dogwood - this is the most elegant tree of Springtime, graceful branches dense with flowers, lacy and open, spreading and so like a Japanese scroll painting.

In Japanese art, a Zen Buddhist aesthetic called "mono no aware" values the transient nature of beauty, the possibility of spiritual transcendence, and the unknowable nature of existence. It translates literally as "an awareness of things".

Another related term, "wabi-sabi", describes finding meaning in profound nature, and accepting the natural changes and cycles of all existence. What is authentic and perhaps imperfect is most revered, and this is beauty, fleeting and returning.

white dogwood 

fruit tree?

Beneath the cherry tree

One sunny spring morning
     
I lift my face
 to

Pink rain falling.

These ragged and ruffled tulips reminded me of the sleeves of a woman's dress in a John Singer Sargent portrait.

Fully open, the classic tulip form seems to have been exploded by  its willful opening energy.  

Fruit trees, white and pink

Every day John reads to Lib a biography of 

Winston Churchill.  She, member of the greatest generation, listens raptly to the retelling of the seminal events of war which shaped her life. I note, her singular humor and firmness of will do not seem dissimilar to the grand old leader himself.    

It's hard to grow Japanese maples on the west coast - but here they are a burgundy counterpoint of color to the lavish pastel trees dancing with complete abandon on the lawns.

Lilacs - what I do remember from the midwest.  John and I seek them out, even in California, we found a place they will grow.   This year, he bought them for Lib in a florist's shop. Odd, old-fashioned, reminding me of a beloved aunt's perfume, The most lambently Proustian of blooms.  This bush grows on his junior-high crush's home. The fragrance, perhaps the most stunning sense memory of all, the memory of purest childhood.

This is SpringHill Cemetery, 1765, on Valley Road, one of several old cemeteries to be found along the rapidly greening roads of New Canaan. So pleasant and peaceful, thinking of all the families and their lives lived ill and well, marked with the private events of individual history. 

Dogwood belongs here most of all.