Turquoise

I've been thinking about Connecticut.

We lived in Connecticut long enough ago that I look back on that time through rose colored glasses. Those halcyon days.

Connecticut was my favorite little shops in Mystic and seeking refuge on hot summer days at Hammonasset Beach or better, Misquamicut Beach in nearby Rhode Island. The waves lapped up excitement for toddlers and the breezes from the Long Island Sound lowered my shoulders into a relaxed ahhhhhhhhhh.

Connecticut was driving to Ridgefield to spend the afternoon with Mindy. It was dozens of church spires reigning above the city. Connecticut was meeting Lisa at the park or the beach. It was waiting with Braeden for Adam to come home from class in dappled light under the tall oak trees outside our brick apartment building on Prospect Street.

Connecticut was the best pizza on the planet and drives along the Merritt Parkway in its autumnal glory that made me want to cry and laugh and gasp and shout just for the beauty of it all.

Connecticut was climbing stairs to Apryl's apartment perched high about the parish house for The Center Church on the Green.

Connecticut was the New Haven Green surrounded by the fortress like Yale campus.

It was old cemeteries that fascinated and vistas from East Rock and West Rock.

Connecticut was the salad days of my motherhood. Braeden didn't wear jeans with the knees ripped out and stretched out t-shirts. I dressed him in denim overalls and corduroy pants and impossibly small little sweaters and jackets. He looked like Someone Whose Mother Cared. He was the center of my universe (which I'm still paying for) and taking him for strolls among the mansions on Edgehill Road was all it took to make us both supremely happy.

Connecticut was the birthplace of Emma, my own little Yankee Doodle Dandy.

It was where I finally grew up and left home (college with my sisters didn't feel as much like leaving home as being on the other side of the country in a city where I started out knowing exactly two people...Adam and Braeden).

Adam's going on a business trip (I'm blue)...

...to Connecticut (I'm green--with envy).

So turquoise.

I tell myself that Mindy and Lisa and Apryl don't live there anymore anyway.

And I'd probably not remember where things were and get lost.

And remember how rude the cashiers were at Stop and Shop?

But Connecticut...in the autumn! (which sort of twists the knife and salts the wound)

Turquoise.