There was a day, I’d guess it was before Christmas, but after Thanksgiving, when we had a few inches of our favorite packing snow. I met up with JJ at a place between her home and mine. She brought along her friend from across the street. Diane was a bubbly blonde, a little younger than JJ and I.
Was it love? At seventeen, the ripest age for romantic love, it certainly was. Did it stand the tests of families and friends and circumstance? Not so much. We did not understand how badly the cards had been stacked against us. The most deadly traps were my own expectations.
When my family moved back to Old Saybrook from Clinton in January 1979, we lived first at 355 Main Street, literally next door to the house that had belonged to my grandparents from the late 1950s until 1971. But we only rented that house for 18 months. In June 1980 we began moving to the rambling ranch on the top of Ferry Hill.
When my mother was in junior high, her father built a desk for her. It was simple, with a wide, shallow center drawer and three deep drawers down the left side. It was very typical for the time.
Pin the Tail on the Maitre’d When I lived in the Beach Park neighborhood of Clinton, my mother went to bar tending school and later got a job at Chello Oyster House in Guilford. She…
