Hudson River Valley & Jack

You'd think I'd include photos of the dramatic vistas or at least a reference to the Storm King Sculplture Park, but this trip was more about relationships than scenery and culture. My sister-in-law and her husband live in Newburgh, New York in the Hudson River Valley. Her identical twin sister and her husband live only minutes away in nearby Beacon, running the artsy high-end Architectural Glass business there, but they were away. I've always liked my sister-in-law, but I don't like the feelings thoughts of my late husband evoke,  a sudden death, so young, it's just a lot. I was captive to mixed sentiments on whether I should go. 

Nonetheless, late afternoon found me pulling into their driveway. Her husband, who came into her life a bit later in life is pretty reliably sweet and arrived home from work shortly after I navigated us to a country road that took us through a farm of forty thoroughbred horses grazing, many of them foals. Magnificent creatures.  I had comfy digs at their place, a double bed and the entire basement, including my own bathroom with a shower. H & L, rise before the sun and enjoy quiet time together in their living room overlooking a pretty yard teeming with small wildlife and spilling with birdsong before H leaves for work. That's a typical weekday and it was Friday. My sister-in-law is a designer of graphic illustrations and clothing and works primarily from home, and she does a whole lot of other things, but she was taking the day off. 

I do not rise before the sun and posed no disruptive threat to their morning reverie.

We hadn't had a long conversation in years but there are some people with whom you can just pick up without missing a beat and she is one of them. We had history. We talked all morning. My perspective on my marriage and my husband's death had of course evolved with time, and I still nursed a disappointment with a few of her family members, notably her parents who disappeared from the lives of my children, selfishly protecting their feelings of grief by insulating themselves from reality, blaming me for a tree branch killing him, how could I take that accusation seriously? and simply pretending as they did with the death of his brother before him, that he never existed. Leave no trace. I was able to express my feelings to her, and while his sudden death curtailed any opportunity of resolving the questions between us, presenting the evidence of my narrative was liberating. I hope my catharsis was not trauma-dumping. L is very level and matter--of-fact though and one gets the feeling that she simply understands your perspective. There should be more people like her. 

I'm not. If I'm in the mood I'll challenge your core beliefs even though we're just talking about baking bread.

Then we took a walk in a municipal park, finding many small turtles playing among the lily pads and cattails and whatever that common weed is that covers wetlands of its lake, and eating apples she'd brought along. That was perhaps the tastiest apple I've ever had. 

I realized that I liked keeping company with someone who remains aware of the capacity of her stomach and eats accordingly. I am prone to temptation.

Back at the house, while she was mildly railing against letting more advanced technology into her life, I was about to show her Find my Friends and when I opened it I saw that my niece Tori was just a few miles away. She was on her way back to Brooklyn after a weekend in Woodstock, where she'd taken a romantic retreat with her husband before he had to return to work from paternity leave. They had stopped in Beacon to relax by a stream. I jumped in my car, weaved through the rush hour traffic and caught them just as they were about to leave.

Jack and I connected as I anticipated we would.

Back at the house again, my brother-in-law was on his way home with groceries for dinner, which I might note was divine. After filling our bellies, he played guitar. We went through a lot of songs we both knew but hadn't heard for years and it was all very fulfilling.

The next morning we had breakfast at a sweet little place in Newburgh and I headed up the road toward Acadia National Park.