January...

The middle of January already. Only two and a half? More months till signs of spring.
When syrup making begins and snowdrops come up through the earth, I know I've come through one more winter at Quarry Hill.
In days of yore, we would spend our winters at our cabin(s) on a lake in the National Forest in Florida, swimming and watching the beautiful sunsets. But now, work and various duties keep us here. I hope one day to be able to return to our lake in the woods in the winter, and swim on the beaches of my second home state.

Irving, before he died in 1990, dreamed of being at the ocean and, as he said to me, "There I was, at the ocean." (Barbara says he dreamed of looking back and seeing his footprints in the sand, and thought that it was a dream of approaching death... but not such a bad one, I think. "Footprints in the sands of time..." A poem he knew well, may have been in his subconscious at that time. (We dream of water, the ocean, when we draw near to the end of life, if we are conscious and transcendent people like my parents. Brion says it's the amniotic fluid before birth-- who knows?)
Barbara too just said she had had a dream of swimming in delicious shallow water in the ocean. I said, "Maybe you can go to the ocean next summer." She said, "But I don't want to go without you."
If she can make it, I'll try to get her to the ocean-- but I'm afraid her body might find the long trip difficult. I wonder if she would enjoy swimming in a swimming pool?
She is 91... (But still drawing beautifully)...