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9

The other occasion in New Haven was a walk I took to East Rock one raw, cloudy day. As I remember it, East Rock was an imposing prominence in a large park on the outskirts of town where it was fairly wild and you could enjoy yourself just roaming around in the open. The views were good as well as varied. To the west lay the city and to the south the Sound, with New Haven harbor cutting into the shoreline. Long Island was hazy in the distance across the water. To the north the rolling wooded hills stretched away as far as you could see. Eastward the shore finally faded away in the gray distance. It reminded me so much of Syracuse--perhaps Mausoleum Hill. It brought back a flood of memories of those days ten years before--the spring of 1924 as I was moving rapidly toward the end of my college career, unaware maybe of what a precious period was drawing to its close, never to be duplicated. It made me think again of sunrise breakfasts with Doris and Doug and Mary and that both of the girls were now dead, a bitter thought. I suddenly felt utterly frustrated that those youthful days could never be again. The past came back strongly, almost like a material thing striking me. And yet I found it was all with an exquisite sadness too. For there is something fine about thoughts like that which lift one temporarily out of concentration on the present, which is so often selfish and self-centered. This experience and the one in the Taft dining room are recorded on cards bearing the same date and may have occurred on the same day. If so, it may have been my thoughts regarding the mother and daughter, particularly the latter, which triggered the mood at East Rock. At any rate, there it was, showing that ten years after graduation from college, I was still looking back occasionally with great wistfulness and often frustration at a life which had been very dear to me, or at least I had thought had been very dear to me. The truth of the matter is that even in those mourned-for days of the early 20s, I had also experienced my sorrows and frustrations. I guess that no period is perfect, but in retrospect some of them seem that way.
My diary resumes on May 30th, Decoration Day, with a one-day entry, and then lapses again, this time all the way to September 1, 1935. But Decoration Day 1934 found me in a much brighter mood than the one I was in at East Rock on April 23rd. I record sitting in the back yard under the peach tree and Roger is playing around near me with his red wheelbarrow. He wore a little pale-blue suit, white sweater, jockey cap, and short blue socks. He was sturdy, tanned and happy, ramming his wheelbarrow into my chair and crying out joyfully, "Bingo!" The sun was hot, the long severe winter was over and summer was almost at hand. We looked ahead to the summer air and the sunshine and the flowers. When we reviewed our assets of youth and health with the best of life still ahead, many lessons learned, the long white road stretching away into the future, we knew we had the greatest blessings of all. I