Some new four footed friends

I think of how Laura would have enjoyed seeing some of the new four-footed friends we've met. There's Lilac, Dandelion, and Daffodil, the hardy Shetland Sheep.


And Pumpkin, the calico kitten.

Been trying to get a decent photo of the cardinals that frequent the yard-but no luck. Thanks to our neighbor for this photo of a cardinal.
It turns out cardinals are non migratory and live their whole lives within an area of a few square miles. It reminds me of Laura who lived her whole life in just one house.

Winter break 2009

There's a world of trouble out there. The pictures will haunt us, the thoughts will haunt us. Photos of a tangle of burned out cars, all that remains for some of a desperate attempt to flee a raging fire, those terrible bush fires in Victoria, Australia.

The young will be young. It's winter break and time to go somewhere if the opportunity presents. While older folk work and count themselves fortunate to have a job that totally absorbs them and nearly all the hours of their day, young folk take off for the slopes. Guided only by GPS (no maps! who needs them anymore!) Suse and her friend Rachel hit the road for a ski trip in Vermont. Seniors in high school both, they are quite responsible young ladies. A photo of them today at Okemo in Ludlow Vermont.

Laura winter 2004 on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

It just took briefly overhearing in a radio weather forecast the words: ...snow on the coast..." and I was back there... Back to the February 2004 visit to Cape Cod with Laura. Though the beast was lurking within her at some microscopic level, we were all blissfully ignorant at the time. Laura seemed very healthy and happy.
Happy very much so, here visiting one of her favorite places, Cape Cod, the place that since she was very young, she had maintained she wanted to live someday.

A Cape Cod snow fall. People cross country skiing to the beach. Laura running on ahead down to the Coast Guard Beach. Laura running back and forth along the waves, just as I had known her to do since she was very little.

Five years ago now since she ran so joyfully along this beach. Over two years now since she's been gone. Laura's classmates have grown and matured. She must look very young to them in these photos

With these photos, I hope you can go "back" too. I hope you like them. I think Laura would be pleased to know you did.

For a larger image of most photos in this blog, click on any individual photo. Laura is in every one of the photos above!

"The entire world is a ...collection of memoranda that she did exist and that I have lost her."
from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Praise for "Air and Simple Gifts"

I don't like to think of Laura missing things happening in life in the world around us now so I don't often have (or want to have) the agonizing thought: "this particular thing I wish she could have seen or heard."
Most things I rationalize are not so unique that she didn't witness some other version of it in her life. Up to now the only thing that fell outside my rationalization net in these last two years was the Opening Ceremony to the Beijing Olympics. The drummers. The drummers. She would have really liked that and that whole Opening Ceremony.
Inauguration Day yesterday. Had that same kind of thought during the playing of "Air and Simple Gifts." Laura would have enjoyed the synchrony of the musicians and their joy, their clothing ruffling in the wind in the cold and bright air. In the months before her death, on long car rides, to and from CHOP, Laura would ask for the Yo Yo Ma CD to be played. It was a Silk Road Ensemble CD that we listened to, the Distant Green Valley the track she wanted to hear.
Had that thought again hearing "Air and Simple Gifts." She would have liked this. And so I invite you to listen again and see and hear the joy of the musicians as I think Laura would have.(click on the in text link in the preceding sentence to get to a youtube video of it.)

Happy Inauguration Day!
Suse and I were this close to Obama one year ago during the NH Primary campaign. We were packed in with the throng in the Nashua NH high school gym on the front line to greet Obama who was surrounded by the many Secret Service agents visible in this photo (our photo but we are not in the photo.)