Sunday Memories - Our Version of "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay"

Florence's Mother,
My Grandmother,
Sophie Levenstein Deutsch
Sometime in the 1920's or 30's,
probably in Trenton, NJ

From the Column "And They Said"

A State Gazette Reporter asked three persons sitting along the retaining wall on Stacey Park behind the State House this questions: what enjoyment do you get out of watching the river:

Mrs. William Deutsch, 227 Jackson Street: I just like to look at it while my little girl plays around the park. I could spend all day here if I could. The park is the nearest place I can bring my little girl to play in the fresh air and sunshine. There is so much space. In the summer I come most every day as we have no yard or porch. Right now the sticks and dirt from the flood are all over the grass. I hope it is cleared away soon and the benches put out. It isn't so comfortable watching the river sitting on this cold stone wall.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: OHBOMBAY.BLOGSPOT.COM

Mukul Agarwal, a frequent commenter on this blog, has begun his own blog

ohbombay.blogspot.com

BOMBAY:
Tale of a city and a family flying on the arrow of time, under the dictatorship of change.

Please check it out (link on the right).

Just in Time for the the Holidays: Thanking the Problems for Being the Gifts

Years and years and years ago times were, well, not so hotsy totsy. I was urged to every night make a list of three things I felt grateful for. I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard of. If there were things to feel grateful for, I wouldn't be in the shape I was. But desperate for anything better than what was, I did. Often item 2 and 3 were the pencil and the paper I was using. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Then one day I noticed a gentle reprieve. The list grew. My life soften.

Things got better, things got worse, things got different. Things got real. Life went on.

Then things got, well, not so hotsy totsy. I was urged to thank my problems. I told the bearer of such advice to go fuck himself. But desperate for anything better than what was, I did. And slowly a rejection turned into a reprieve from a firing line, a disaster led to the perfect place where things ran perfectly, a broken heart broke open bigger and I ended up loving someone else more.

Each obstacle held the gift I always wanted. I began to thank my problems. But only after the fact when I saw how well things always turned out

Things got better, things got worse, things got different. Things got real. Life went on.

And then things got completely and unequivocally horrible grief loss rage insanity wiping shit off floors begging love not to leave sudden wakings in the middle of the night desperate to have those lost years back desperate not to feel it was all over desperate...


There was nothing to do but thank and thank and thank while pouring out pain like a mother giving birth not always sure the gift I sought laid beneath such poundings. The more I poured out pain, grief or loss or desire or yearning or unresolved or uncertainty or fear or .... pages and pages and pages of thanks poured out too, like the kisses that pour out when love invites.

Thank you for this crisis -- it got me to go deeper and recognize the bruised injury thank you for forcing me to practice loving even when I was being rejected it hurt like hell and I was so exhausted from years of crying but I finally emerged from the prison I had always lived in thank you for such sorrowful childhood moments it taught me to stand in the heart of a crisis, a trauma, a disaster and understand war and choose peace thank you for my desire and my passion. It has kept me moving to bigger rather than smaller thank you for the directness of your words the clarity of your heart oh and thank you thank you thank you for that kiss that night thank you for this pain that makes me weep with regret and love with abandonment thank you for such a beautiful home it may be filled with heartbreaking memories but it is a home that sheltered me these three tough decades and I can still afford to live in and it is now so rare and I am blessed.

Thank you for the memories of where everything that went wrong was only on its way to going right.

A Special Monday : Deutschy

Today is Florence's birthday. She would have been 85 years old.

Tonight, spoke to that rare friend, the one who knew her when they were both so young they still had hope, but both so old they recognized passion and desire.

"This is the first year your mom, my "Deutschy" is not having a birthday on this earth."

Almost 70 years worth of speaking or not speaking, they both always knew when the other's day was there. Cards sent but returned. Silent missing, but refusing to admit. Attempts, deep embraces, secrets, the meaning of home, irreconcilable differences, marriages...

But at the end the small little guitar key chain this friend sent to Florence was grabbed and clutched, a talisman against the encroaching darkness she would need to travel alone.

Sunday Memories - A Table of Thanks

Over the last couple of decades the meal has pretty much stayed the same because I really can't cook anything else. Chicken, salad, bread, maybe some yams if I remember not to burn them, whatever dishes and dessert others contribute... (Tonight's menu: hard salami, cheese, ratatouille, fondue, snap peas, tiramisu, chocolate and better wine than the ones I got at Trader Joe's...)

But the saving grace of my bad cooking has been twenty-five years of the utter luck of having wonderful friends who come and sit and eat and laugh and talk and drink and share and argue and love and celebrate absolutely nothing except a rare night where all of the above can happen.

To Every Thing There is a Season (or how I got through another cleaning day at Florence's)

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

--Ecclesiastes 3. 1-8

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: CHANGE OF TIME FOR MEMORIAL FOR FLORENCE DEUTSCH MOED

The Memorial has been rescheduled to 11:00 am on December 20th, Saturday.




Please join the family of Florence Deutsch Moed at the Henry Street Settlement Abrons Arts Center in commemorating her life on December 20th, Saturday. A memorial of story and music will, in Florence's words, commence at 11:00AM. Cake and tea and coffee will be served before, after and during as eating is good during times of any emotion.

If you would like to share a story or play a piece, please contact me. We look forward to seeing you there.

Best, Claire

***

Abrons Arts Center
Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand Street at the corner of Pitt Street
New York, New York

Directions:

The Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street at the corner of Pitt on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

SUBWAY

The Abrons Arts Center is subway accessible by taking:


* the F train to Delancey

* the J or M trains to Essex Street

* the D or B trains to Grand Street

BUS

The Abrons Arts Center is also easily accessible by bus:

* M15 to Grand Street

* M22 to Montgomery Street

* M9 to Grand Street

* M14 to Grand Street

* B39 to Essex

CAR OR CAB

Take the FDR Drive southbound and exit at Grand Street. Northbound FDR does not have an exit for Grand or South Street. Use the Houston Street exit.

PARKING

Parking lots are available on Suffolk Street between Broome and Delancey; and East Broadway and Clinton Streets.

This is Her New York

This is one of my oldest friends. We met when we were twelve.

Before that I was on Grand Street, which was tough, and she was on 109th Street and Riverside, which was dangerous. We didn't know any different and if you ran fast enough it really didn't matter.

How my then 17-year-old sister decided we should meet and how she, with me in tow, traversed the many bus and train lines from the lower east side to the upper west side to make sure we did I don't know, but within minutes of meeting one another this other twelve year old and I became the best of friends.

In the ensuing three decades we spoke all the time, we didn't speak for years, we survived a new age spiritual community together, we recovered from that community apart, I visited her when she ran away to the then delapitated Fifth Avenue Hotel to be a 15 year old groupie, she was the only example I had of successful defiance, I was a bridesmaid when she married a man, host to her and her young girlfriend at the time after she left her husband and then host again to her and her current boyfriend, and during the recent New York City blackout in 2003, even though we hadn't spoken in years, stranded, she knew to come my house and spend the night.

So during my own blackout where the lights in my heart disappeared I knew to come to her and on a rainy night at the tiny French restaurant older than how long we knew each other, just as worn and welcoming as the home we felt for one another, the food as comforting as our affection for one another, a relief spreading across a tiny table, we were reminded that 40 years of friendship held dear and strong through loss and storm and and change.

No new words were said. But walking down the streets of our shared history, an emotional neighborhood that hadn't been obliteraged by sudden and not-so-sudden events, an internal city we didn't have to explain to one another, old familiar words offered new hope.

Sunday Memories - The Writing On The Wall

There were so many things we were not allowed to do. We were not allowed to eat candy, not allowed to not practice our violinpianotheorysightsingingflute, and not allowed to watch TV unless it was Friday and we were at Gramma's.

But there were things we were allowed to do, the things that other kids never got to do. And one of them was writing on our walls. Given chalk or pencils or crayons or even pen, our walls by our beds became tomes of our lives. My sister, when studying Russian at Hunter High, wrote Yopt tvayah matz a lot, especially when she was mad. It means motherfucker. I didn't know Russian so I wrote motherfucker but disguised the letters into boxes and circles so you couldn't tell. Regardless of what we wrote, it was ours and never did I find my canvas of private musings erased or washed off. Never was I censored.

Decades later in my own and suddenly empty home, without thinking, I one night started scrawling on a wall words and rage and desire and pain and the section from Twelfth Night where my name came from.

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out 'Olivia!' O, You should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!

That night I was just trying to remember who I was, which was hard because the last time that happened it was 1961 and I was still pre-verbal. The scrawling and uncovering got lengthy, and day after day the words took over more and more of the wall.

Eventually some sense of self returned and I hired a friend to paint the room. When confront with a wall now chock-full-of-ranting, begging and pleading to someone divine to make something anything better, my friend said nothing. But I did notice that uncomfortable squirming men do when you inadvertently reveal emotions and they just want you to be their friend they occasionally fantasize about fucking.

The new paint and the new life unfolded into more new paint and more new life and then again, even more new paint and new life. And as each coat of paint went on the walls, life offered, like an onion layer peeled back, knowledge and I'd be revealed again and again to who I was and what I felt or thought or saw or experienced. But nothing went up on the wall. The paint jobs were too nice and besides, I felt too embarrassed to let anyone living with me in on what was going on inside.

Until one night, recently. In a suddenly empty home, my newly painted walls of sweet bright hope spread open wide and welcomed me, just like before, to not know who I was or what I was all about. Without even thinking about it, little sweet notes of brutal existence once again found themselves up on the wall.

An East River Runs Through It

It is always there, wide enough to drown people, narrow enough to understand what's on the other side. I think my aunt swam in it. and maybe an uncle too. It's where I'd go, little girl running down Grand Street with a home made kite made of construction paper in second grade. I was just sure the wind by the river would pick up the kite and make it fly just like in the story books. It was where the neighborhood flasher hung out, a man we all knew by sight (the taunting response we were all taught just in case: I thought that was penis but I'm not so sure). The place my parents walked the two of us running behind or in front. The river where my friends cast their sins during the High Holy Days. The river every one of my friends and me have family pictures of - her mom and dad when they were teenagers, my mom and dad just married, her little sister in a stroller, my big sister sitting on my dad's knee. The river I just know as a part of my body, my air, my street, my life and the one I still cross on mid-night ferry rides sometimes seeking solace and comfort from a life fraught with grief and other times just a need to return back to the smells of home, the briny water, the shore front shapes, the feel of the ferry's wake, the sounds I know like I know my heartbeat, or footsteps or that small moan when delight surprises.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: MEMORIAL FOR FLORENCE DEUTSCH MOED

Please join the family of Florence Deutsch Moed at the Henry Street Settlement Abrons Arts Center in commemorating her life on December 20th, Saturday. A memorial of story and music will, in Florence's words, commence at 2:00pm. Cake and tea and coffee will be served after.

If you would like to share a story or play a piece, please contact me. We look forward to seeing you there.

Best, Claire

***

Abrons Arts Center
Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand Street at the corner of Pitt Street
New York, New York

Directions:

The Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street at the corner of Pitt on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

SUBWAY

The Abrons Arts Center is subway accessible by taking:


* the F train to Delancey

* the J or M trains to Essex Street

* the D or B trains to Grand Street

BUS

The Abrons Arts Center is also easily accessible by bus:

* M15 to Grand Street

* M22 to Montgomery Street

* M9 to Grand Street

* M14 to Grand Street

* B39 to Essex

CAR OR CAB

Take the FDR Drive southbound and exit at Grand Street. Northbound FDR does not have an exit for Grand or South Street. Use the Houston Street exit.

PARKING

Parking lots are available on Suffolk Street between Broome and Delancey; and East Broadway and Clinton Streets.

Letters from the Deep: Part One

The family tradition of writing one another letters:

Dear Mom,
Louise said a curs word and so did I. Louise said a-s-s and and I said f-u-c-k. I'm sorry I said it. (Do not show daddy this note.) You'll find my homework in my note book. Please put back the books and do not forget any of the book. My homework (spelling and math) are the first ones in the first section. Do not mess up my paper. I changed my pantty.
Claire
TO MOM
Please do not throw this paper away!!!!!

Dear Claire
Don't say I never wrote to you at camp
Love, Louise
PS Whe you come home, I shall have a guest. You'll sleep on the couch Wed.
Love, Louise

"Lend me your ears."
Dear Mother,
Please say to me that you "love me." Don't rip this up.
Love + xxxx
Claire

Dear Claire-
When you are stirred, out there in that beautiful country, to great heights of aspiring, or being inspired, cast your yearning thought to improving your spelling....
Florence

Dear Claire,
Wish you were here. Glad you are there.
Dad

Sunday Memories - Once Only a Memory, It Returns

Unlike the daughters and sons of the socialists and communists in my neighborhood, I was taught to stand for the flag and mangle the Pledge of Allegiance like any normal grade school kid. It was a given in our home that the Kennedys were revered and that America was great.

And then, what happened... Vietnam, Kent State, too many assassinations and those god-awful Nixon and Reagan people.

There was no more standing for the flag, and almost an embarrassment of admitting where I came from. And except for one brief moment in the 1980's when I was being arrested for protesting nuclear armament at the US Mission to the United Nations, I never sang the National Anthem. Not even at baseball games.

Then it got worse. And worse and worse and worse.

In 2006 struggling to get home care benefits for my 83 year old, ailing, almost completely blind, incontinent, befuddled, barely ambulatory mother, I spent hours calling government offices, and begging and pleading with overworked, underappreciated civil servants for information and guidance of just how to ensure that in order to keep her safe, fed and clean in her home of 50 years, my mom would not risk poverty or destitution or that her needs would not cannibalize the meager time and resources of either of her daughters.

And each and every civil servant would whisper or murmur or even outright say "the current administration, your president, the laws changed.." and then after all those hours of calls, and a multitude of paperwork and doctor notes, and visit after visit after visit of assessments from social services and medicaid nurses and caseworkers, we were denied services.

I stood before a mirror in a battered office bathroom and spit my disallegiance - I am no longer an American. I am no longer an American. This is no longer my country. I am no longer an American.

I once wrote that when it came to our mother, my sister and I made pitbulls look like pussy. We did get our mother benefits not only because we ferociously fought back, but because those overworked, underappreciated civil servants and caseworkers also whispered ways of correctly answering questions engineered to guarantee rejection.

Sorrow and despair and a familiar hopelessness became a gray soul. I forgot what colors of possibilities looked liked.

And then something happened... never expected always hoped for... like true love when it appears after loss and heartbreak ... the terror of Tuesday night unfolded into a miracle and suddenly I wanted to wave my American Flag and sing the National Anthem.

... Gave Proof Through The Night That Our Flag Was Still There

"YES WE CAN!" they shouted as they crossed the street
"YES WE DID!" the others roared back.

Shona Tova, Shona Tova, a voting day for all of us, Shona Tova

I get there at 6:45. J, the neighbor, had brought his dog Wallace at 6:20. "It was packed then." We meet, him coming out, me going in.

"It's the electrical college that's going to decide," says the lady in front when the van parks with an Obama poster in its window. "That's what has to be change. Makes me sick." I'm not sure but there are whiffs of booze somewhere.

"Which line are you on?"
"I think that's just the information line."
"This line is for 66."
"Please do not get on that line unless you talk to me."
"I'm 66."
"They change the boundaries every year. Please do not get on that line unless you... have you talked to me?"
"Why didn't you tell us that outside?"
"This is outside. Miss, Miss. The Asian lady..."
"I'm not Asian..."

The old man, barely sighted, cane in hand, resetting the booth as each of us steps into it. "I wish I could tell people who to vote for," after the young suited man sticks his head out of the booth saying "um I have a question?"

It is my turn and I step into the old familiar booth. A new year, a new year, a new year, each click of a tiny lever in this battered old spaceship to democracy. A new year, a new year, a new year... God Bless America I whisper and pull the lever to vote.

Sunday Memories - The Bureau of the Bubble Gum

If we were sick we stayed at home in bed, drinking tea and eating toast. But then there were these shots we had to get, so there was no avoiding visiting Dr. G.'s office, which was on Lewis Street. Ground Floor of the building my parents had lived in when they began making a family, up the street from PS 110 where we went to school, across the street from Kozy Corner where I coveted the too expensive comic books.

The unbearableness of being stuck with thick heavy needles was only mitigated by a small bowl on his desk of Bazooka Bubble Gum.

Oh for two little girls whose parents had refused them sweets and candies and sodas and cakes except once a week at Gramma's house, that bowl was the holy grail we could claim by journeying through the hell of vaccinations.

The grasp around that small rectangle, the smell of something precious when pulling back the paper, the literary merits of the cartoon, the repeating of the joke on the bottom, the many methods of the first bite, either breaking it along the middle line, or popping all of it into the mouth or nibbling the edges or...

Doctor visits only happened once or twice a year and that gum had to last just a little bit longer than one day. So for as long as we could stand it my sister and I were allowed to stick our gum on the side of our bureaus and each day after school we would get to have that piece of bubble gum once again.

Within days or maybe even a week, the gum would become untenable. And so the wait for the next shot would begin.