Precisely What Was Being Memorialized

Josephine Baker’s version of “Blue skies, nothing but blue skies . . .” sounding off now in my mind’s memory, beneath this achingly azure, winter sky.  I’m on my way to New Haven.  Certainly I haven’t been here for many years.  Recently I picked up a copy of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey.  I’d read it back in my twenties. I had it in my luggage to read at some point during the trip.  This morning I recalled that it begins with Lane standing there, waiting for Franny at the New Haven train station.  What better reason could there be but to dig back in?

I looked online to find a reasonable café near the New Haven train station in which to have today’s meeting.  Most cafés seemed to be a fifteen-minute walk away.  I proposed one named “Fuel” on Wooster St. It was lauded for its coffee.  We plodded along Union Avenue, turned right on Water St., left on Olive St., and right again on Wooster.  My colleagues and I followed our Google Maps right to Fuel’s door.  The two gentleman we were planning on meeting were waiting there for us.  There was however, only one other stool, in the café.  We looked outside and, considered the park across the street.  The gent we were meeting suggested we all just move ourselves over to the park there across the street.  So we did. 

The Wooster Memorial Playground is a small park.  It was not designed for business meetings.  The benches are arrayed in circles with twenty feet of space between them.  Ideal for pigeon feeding and quiet resting, though no more than three people at a time can actually sit on one.  And some of us sat on the curb and some of us stood and we began what became a fruitful discussion. 

I played with an oak leaf lying there beside me and considered the trees in the park.  There were a few oaks like the one behind me, a maple, what looked like a sycamore.  In the middle stood a marble slab, memorializing something.  An American flag was taped to the stone.  I should have, but I never looked to see precisely what was being memorialized.

For much time I marvelled that it was mild enough to have this meeting out of doors in the Connecticut January.  Then sun began to fall and the shadows became longer.  I noticed the gentleman I was speaking with had only a sweater on.  People began to shift as if they were chilly.  Certainly, I was.  I began to steer the conversation towards closure.  I was conscious of the departing times for the train. 

We began to shake hands and move towards the park entrance.  I said that we should return here if we ever accomplished anything and have a second memorial meeting here in the Wooster Memorial Playground.