Mill River Spring Serenade

I looked for the woman I used to see at the Mill River every day. I found new life and new faces in her place.

She was the woman who sat on the big rock near the water. She had a name, of course. I never knew what it was. I’d say, ​“Hello, nice day. How are you? Isn’t it lovely here on the banks of the Mill River?”

She was not the sort of nature lover who limited her astonishments to the renewing power of spring. The woman, whom I judged to be in her mid-80s, was there in every weather, in every season, almost every day.

She is no longer sitting on the rock, no longer enduring my platitudes, nowhere to be seen.

My mind, of course, went into Covid mode. Was she a victim of that? Or something else? Or, is she still with us but for some reason unable to take that hike she took every day to the end of Orange Street and its sudden, natural setting?

Recently, on one of the first days of spring, I returned to her perch to seek clues. Clues of what, I wasn’t sure.

On that afternoon, I had the company of Suzanne, our pooch, and our grandson, Max.

Along the way, I snapped a photo of the rows of daffodils that stretch nearly 50 yards along the edge of East Rock Park. I have taken that same picture, from the same angle, every April.

This time it took on new meaning. These daffs spring up no matter what happens around them, or what the city or the country or the world have gone through.

Before we arrived at the big rock, I looked up at the incline that reaches the top of the road, expecting to see what I had noticed a few days earlier. Someone had decided East Rock Park was a perfect place to dump two old pink couches.

The furniture appeared to be tossed from a truck. It had taken down some of the greenery on the edge of the park.

I had taken a picture of those, too, thinking I might call the authorities. Now the furniture was gone. Apparently, the efforts to keep New Haven parks pristine are paying off.

Down at the big rock, there was no sign of the woman. Instead, the new puppy in our house chose the space as his own, as if he inherited it from her. From the rock, he waddled to the water and found it delicious.

While we watched him, Max saw a turtle out on a limb, sunning himself (or herself). This creature had previously hidden under his shell, blocking out any news of pandemics or political shenanigans or the outcome of the Super Bowl. The sun was what mattered. And he had it.

Meanwhile, music played. Not canned music. The music of an outdoor soloist, somewhere in the vicinity.

Fluid waves of tenor sax notes echoed throughout the valley, as if he had been hired to wake us up to what was happening. His sounds were not melodic, more like the runs of Sonny Rollins.

I mean, the man knew his instrument. I could tell he’d lived with it for years. Who was he, and where was he?

We crossed the footbridge over the river, with its new section built in 2020, with the names of those who made it etched into the wood. We could still hear the music.

It had suddenly become familiar. It was the old ragtime hit, ​“The Entertainer,” by Scott Joplin, something I’ve played on the piano since ​“The Sting” was released in 1973.

When I heard it, I wanted to skip along. It was my grandson, whose bones are only 18 years old, who ran with the puppy across the terrain. 

Fortunately for Suzanne and me, the pace soon returned to something a snail could manage.

Many runners passed us. Quite a few of them wore dark blue masks with a white Y on the bottom left. These sons and daughters of Eli were on a mission, seemingly delighted to do this huffing and puffing in a space where skunk cabbage and willow trees showed their new spring green.

Perpendicular to Livingston Street, we cut into the open space. Suzanne and Max and the puppy were eager to get back home, but I wanted a detour.

Suzanne had spotted the man who was making the music for all of us. He was sitting on a park bench, facing the water below.

“I have to talk to him,” I said.

“Of course you do,” she replied.

She’s used to me ​“giving the third degree” to humans within range. She rolled her eyes skyward.

I wandered over slowly, not wanting to stop his playing. Eventually I took a seat near him. He stopped, and we talked.

I complimented him on his impromptu performance. I didn’t have to pay Blue Note prices to hear his wonderful sounds. Indeed, he was a musician who had been around the block a thousand times, and only occasionally around New Haven blocks.

Except for a period in his life when he lived in the Elm City, Lee Mixashawn Rozie has always resided in his native Hartford. He knew all the great musicians of that city, including Jackie McLean, Paul Brown and Paul Landerman.

More than that, using his history and ethnomusicology degree from Trinity College, he created ​“wave art,” which was mostly what we were hearing.

Sitting on his bench he looked up at the 366-foot tall basalt deposit that gives East Rock its name.

“Even that is part of a wave,” he said, referring to the impermanence of what seems like permanence. 

He was in our town, because the man who repaired his instrument is here. Because it needed repair, we had all become the beneficiaries.

That’s nature, isn’t it? Something negative happens. Some gift comes out of it.

The music didn’t end when I pulled myself away from his bench. I saw an array of young people underneath the pavilion near the edge of the park. They were singing, and dancing, and the words were none I’d ever heard before.

These kids, socially distanced, were really into it, being led by their director, who was teaching them new steps and how to project the wonderful music that emerged.

I excused myself and asked one of the young participants what was going on. She told me this was a rehearsal of the United Girls Choir, featuring performers from age 5 to 17.

They looked so delighted to do this music, which comes from South Africa, I was told.

At that point I thought of the old woman and big rock. She was apparently gone, but her nature persisted.

The iconic playwright and Hamden native Thornton Wilder wrote ​“The Dinner Table,” a play in which the mahogany table is the only lasting character in the action.

Over the course of two centuries in an old house, people gather for a Christmas dinner. In each scene two or three of the characters are replaced by new ones. Eventually, every original character is gone, with new ones in their places.

The occasion stays the same. The generations that celebrate it become a casualty of nature.

Something endures. An idea. A new face. A new song.