For the birds

2026 is the Semiquincentennial Anniversary of the American Revolution and in places like Fort Ticonderoga, there will be re-enactments and other celebrations, though given the mood currently and the lack of tourists, I don’t know how much enthusiasm it will muster.

How different to the Bicentennial. How sad.

As we walked in Bicentennial Park, we noticed seagulls riding the wind.

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“Hey look, Mildred. Tourists!”

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“Play it cool, Fred. Maybe they’ve got lunch.”

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“Oops! Nearly blew off my perch!”

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Poor gulls were very disappointed in us. Next time we go we must remember to bring a packet of crisps for them.

Gulls are such opportunists. I remember feeding them by the Thames when I was a little girl, but they quite often help themselves if you don’t guard your snacks.

Sometimes even if you do.

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It is amazing how a photograph can evoke totally unrelated memories…

When my parents decided to sell their property in Barbados, it was on the market for a very long time. Then suddenly one Thanksgiving when I was having dinner with my friend Tim, I got a phone call to say that a buyer had been found, but they must depart by January 1st.

This didn’t leave much time for planning. My mother was recovering from recent abdominal surgery and January was probably the worst time for them to come to New York, given their hatred of cold weather, but just then it seemed their only option.

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So, at the end of December, Tim and I went down to facilitate the transition. The suitcases and boxes in the photo represent the sum total of their possessions once they had rid themselves of everything else. Because there were four of us, there were no excess charges.

Departure day was a shock. In the morning, my mum and dad were the independent, self-reliant people I knew my parents to be. As they changed into their travelling clothes, they became forevermore dependent, turning to me for assistance and advice.

Assistance is one thing, advice is something I endeavour never to offer.

Having had to arrange things at such short notice and with a minimum of information, I had arranged a place for my parents to stay on arrival, but it was a private home which was only temporarily available, so when my dad announced his intention to remain in residence until the weather warmed up, I had to scramble to find an alternative.

(It was May before Dad would come out.)

As it happened, a colleague owned a small apartment complex just off the beach, in the State streets, near where I lived in Long Beach and she was prepared to offer a short-term lease. So Mum and Dad moved in to a tiny one bedroom apartment and spent that winter looking out over the Atlantic Ocean.

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Which is why thinking of seagulls reminds me of that episode. Dad spent hours at the window, watching aeroplanes going in and out of JFK and observing gulls on the beach. He had a theory about which way the birds faced and why. I have forgotten what he’d worked out.

On the way home from work, I used to stop in to check on things and was updated on whose flight had arrived late. Dad got quite good at recognising the different tail logos. On the whole, it wasn’t a bad location for waiting out the winter, though it was terribly confined and soon reeked of my father’s cigar smoke.

Mum had been a heavy smoker, so I don’t think it worried her, but living in two rooms must have been claustrophobic for someone accustomed to a large tropical garden. She did not complain and kept herself busy. I know she was concerned about what would happen next.

Periodically, Dad decided he needed something out of one of their 13 items of baggage and I would go off to Tim’s house down the road where the baggage was kept. Rummaging, I found that Dad had brought all his old paperback books, an ancient stapler and other such “essentials”, while my mother had abandoned almost everything she treasured.

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I was annoyed on my mother’s behalf, though I still have that stapler. 46 years later, it still functions better than any other stapler I have ever owned or even used.

The books in due course were transported to Saint Petersburg, Florida, where my parents found a home, once the weather warmed sufficiently for my father to venture out and some years later, they were packed up once more and shipped to the next home in England.

After my mother died, Dad came back to live near me in Washington State, hauling those books along. I can’t say that I ever saw him pick one up to read, but of course I cannot say that he didn’t. Eventually, I inherited them and they moved twice more before I gave them away when I moved back to New York.

Books are an impractical item to treasure if you move around a lot.

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As the fort at Ticonderoga does not open again until May, we could not go inside, but we drove over to see just where it was. coming up from Cambridge we had seen a number of ospreys and on the way to the fort, there was another, perched up on a pole scoping out the location for a nest, no doubt.

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As we retraced our steps, maybe it was the same bird that flew across the road in front of us and I just managed to capture a shot. We are so glad these wonderful birds are back.

It was a lovely day out.

All those days of rain we’ve been told to expect have not happened, bar a sprinkle or two. I think they program the app to forecast rain so we can never say we weren’t warned and when the Sun shines instead, we are hardly likely to complain.

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