We went back to Moosup for Thanksgiving and my brother George came up from Virginia for the week. While we often met in Nova Scotia, with his job and his family and whatnot, he hadn't spent more than a night or so in Connecticut, in over 30 years.
So it was a good thing for the whole family, but I wanted to tell you a little of my own experience about it. We went to the fish hatchery almost every morning, George to run, like, 3.5 miles in 20 minutes, and me not to do that. We still were almost exactly like we were when we were children, when it came to loving nature, for example, but there were some pretty big changes. For one thing, we both had cars.
There was this mixture. We were living our lives together just as we had done when we were children, and we were also living like grownups - old-ish grownups, with separate lives, and with separate stories about the past thirty years, and with our own grown-up children.
It was 18 degrees Fahrenheit on this particular morning, which I found a little disconcerting. (When I had gotten on the ferry on Block Island, it had been 45 degrees.) I hadn't even brought a coat. Everything had frozen at the hatchery, but it was newly frozen. Things hadn't had time to get pulverized by the winter, so they still had their beautiful fall formations, with just a layer of frost upon them. The ponds were still warm, and steaming, and that made for a lot of localized, heavy frost and for some very interesting pictures.
I feel compelled to tell you that George is a lot thinner in fact, than he looks in this picture. It's just that his arms are up and that's stretching out his hunting vest. That's Molly with him.
George said he liked my pictures, but that was because they made him remember he had been at the hatchery on a beautiful morning with his sister. Wasn't that a nice thing to say?