Hudson's Maine welcome

This Sunday
(Lindsey had scheduled months ago, even made the reservations), Hudson's to be baptized,
or christened,
or doused,

(a loose-ish sort of family)

and read-at by all of us who've paired readings with the task at hand:
Welcoming Hudson to this world, to Maine and, there's a good chance, to fog as well.

With Sarah at the helm, Matt's amassed song requests. Our DJ will come laden with iPod and CDs. Mozart will be represented, as will Jim Croce, John Denver, Ray Charles and Andean flute players. I expect an Hallelujah chorus and maybe some Free to be You and Me to temper that.

As at Linds and Chad's wedding and Linds' memorial, cousin/reverand/friend Ashley Jansen will officiate.

This evening, I took an empty ice tea bottle down to Manhattan's western edge (under the West Side Highway and an embarrassing scramble past geese and down some rocks), and filled it up with Hudson River water. That too will play a little part.

To Maine we go, gathering bits to fete our young man.

I get giddy up there, balsam-infused posts to follow.

Love to all.

C

Hudson's village people

As if needing more evidence:
a sampling from Hudson's album.

Our intellectual

Lynn's front porch booktime happens approximately mid-morning. If you're on Hudson time, it's post feeding and diaper - when the little man is at his most placid.

And intellectually hungry.









Report more soon - catching up on non-Dallas/pre-Maine life but back in blog-swing soon.

Love to all.

C

Grandma

Grandma, almost a year ago, in Sea Island.

Linds had just told us she was pregnant, we were celebrating grandpop's birthday.

Grandma's not well. We're standing by and dear Grandpop is, as he wants it for now, on his own down there with his love and life for the last sixty some years.

The cousins liked to ask grandpop how he met grandma:

He began: "I met her at a wedding,"
And finished with a twinkle, "I thought highly of her bottom."

We love you grandma.
We love you grandpop.

C

It's Hudson time

Chad, Hudson and Mr. Stork

I leave for Dallas this afternoon. American, DFW and nap-time schedule all willing, will have the little man in my arms by 8:45, 9 latest.

Promise not to return without a smile picture.

C

Hudson at 3 (months)

Finally, a proper Dallas report.

Last week in Dallas (as the Mavericks toiled), Dad and Sarah, and then dad for almost 48 hours single-handedly, looked after Hudson. They report a charge who's nights are sublime and to schedule, and whose days are (still) on the fussy, don't-you-dare-put-me-down side. And he pooped lots, ate heartily and smiles for reasons beyond passing gas.

More recently, this in from Lynn:
"Hudson went for his 2 month check up today.
He weighed 10.6 pounds and was 22 inches.
He was perfect until he got 3 needle sticks which included 5 immunizations.
He was so mad, surprised, and hurt that he could only open his mouth wide for a silent scream. By the time he got the 3rd shot he was totally audible.
Lots of deep sighs once he quieted down. Chad was there to comfort him."

C

Visiting Mom, on Milan

Again (for reason's too mundane), I drove up from the city today.
The Taconic's not whooped me yet, but the 35 mile serpentine stretch up from the Saw Mill is testing me. My mettle's battered, but we're intact.

Again, mom's grave - close to where she and Rod had a house, sits south of my own's home's exit. So I got off at Bull's Head Road for another visit to the cemetary.

Again, not a soul there.

Sat by her embedded stone for a spell, realizing (am always the last) why we have markers, and places, for our dead.
Because it's a place to come to where - at least in our minds - we can imagine the person is. Though they may well be everywhere but, or everywhere and.
Anyway, I appreciated the site. And imagined, though Linds' ashes haven't yet come to rest here, that there was a good chance Linds was about too.

A gravestone is a steady thing, to which I attribute omniscience. Mom as oracle sort of.

Today (I lay meagre flowers on the stone - bushes at cemetary's edge in a fallow stretch and lilac long gone), there were ants about. Not much as a welcoming committee but making their way, obliviously busy, across the "0" of mom's "2002", they were strange comfort. So too the cricket hidden near mom's "N".

It was like catching a moment of Mom's now-life, her view, her day - this season for her.

As if she might observe:
More dandelions about this year.
Not so many visitors.
And it's been so wet.

C - glad for a place to go

Our duck in Dallas

Aunt Annie, in Dallas with usual 5927 Vanderbilt suspects plus gradfather Bill for memorial Day, sent this.

We really like.

Hudson maintains a fine gravitas despite/inspite of terry duck outfit.

Cheers to the man.

C

In a station

Small small - blue jay-scale entry.

Backstory:
I came upstate today (it's rained for my arrival).
My commute from the city requires a simple sequence of subway, through the grumpy day-commuters of lower Penn Station, to my own beautful Empire Line Amtrak to Hudson NY. The Empire Line runs beside the Hudson, its seats have plug points and fellow passengers look, mostly, so relieved to be shedding the city that a state of grace and gratitude hovers over the cars.

(Plus: view's stunning, cafe car's open and everyone loves a train ride.)

But the point.
On my first leg of the journey, on the 72nd Street station platform, a gentleman was singing and playing the guitar. I don't recall the songs, and he sang so avidly I couldn't ask his origins, but he sang in Spanish and with a vigor that Linds would have just loved, and danced to. He was dignified, his voice was very strong and clean; the singer/player transported my platform-segment to a New York moment of group giddiness. To a man/child/exectutive, we shared some tangible gladness to be together. And we marveled at our luck to be at that station at that moment.

Lots of smiles and dollars into the guitar case. Our train came, we dispersed - almost lonely now.

When my next leg ended, with the train doors opening at Hudson Station some 2hrs north and later, dandelion puffs filled the compartment.

C - noting with a stub of pencil that Linds was singing everywhere today.