Sunday Memories: The Days of Frostbite

A two-month old Jupiter, then called Jimmy, when he was brought into the shelter with his five brothers and sisters. So sick, they were slotted to be put to death when a friend showed up 45 minutes before it was scheduled, brought them home and nursed them back to health.




Some folks say their pet saved their life. At least a guy on a PBS show said that.

I don't think Jupiter saved my life.

I think he saved me from frostbite seeping into my life and killing off bits and pieces. If it hadn't been for him, I would have lived just fine for years, never noticing that parts of my heart no longer felt.

The Book of Jupiter

Getting Adopted: July, 2009

Happiness and the Heart

Once I Was A Man

Adrian and Jupiter

Home Is The Bag

Even The Cat Was Found On the Street

Thank You East Village Corner

A Day In The Life

A View From A Kitchen

In the Still of the Night

Cat On A Hot Tin...

The Showdown

Still of Another Night

Catboy in Love

Old and New Sunrises

The Cat and the Couch

The Possibilities Are Endless

Peter and Dexter were very nonchalant. After all it was just a couch to them. But for me the idea of once thought immovable history successfully dismantled and drained from my now life was impossible to grasp until after gleeful banging and ripping and pulling apart, the past disintegrated before my eyes and in its place was space where anything could happen.

Encore: GUEST ARTIST: DANA - Day of Miracles

The last in a series of encore posts and new work from Guest Artist Dana.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

It had been years because the menorah had been up in a closet and Dana couldn't reach it. This year Ping brought it down. The miracle of a helping hand.

Dana couldn't remember if there were candles but Ping found the two boxes Dana had tucked away years ago. Another miracle.

I was able, after weeks of work, to come visit. Miracle!

And then Dana sang the bruchas and for the first time in years, miracles of miracles I got to celebrate the Miracle of Lights.

Of course neither of us could remember the words to Rock Of Ages but the miracle of joy at sharing the holiday together unfolded instead.



Rock Of Ages

Rock of Ages let our song,
Praise thy saving power;
Thou amidst the raging foes,
Wast our shelt'rng tower.

Furious they assailed us,
But Thine arm availed us,
And Thy word broke their sword,
When our own strength failed us.
And Thy word broke their sword,
When our own strength failed us.

**

The Eight Days Of Miracles

Once the Maccabees had regained control they returned to the Temple in Jerusalem. By this time it had been spiritually defiled by being used for the worship of foreign gods and also by practices such as sacrificing swine. Jewish troops were determined to purify the Temple by burning ritual oil in the Temple’s menorah for eight days. But to their dismay, they discovered that there was only one day's worth of oil left in the Temple. They lit the menorah anyway and to their surprise the small amount of oil lasted the full eight days.

Sunday Memory Encore: Guest Artist Dana: Trudy and Dana

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Trudy and Dana, both 88 years old. Best friends. Trudy priority mails Dana string beans from her garden.


"We started a conversation when we were eleven and we haven't stopped yet."

Encore: GUEST ARTIST: DANA - Time Flies....

Tuesday, June 15, 2010


It was supposed to be a brief meal.

Four hours later, I was still laughing too hard to write down everything Dana said.

But she had been warned. When one encounters a better writer than oneself one can only rip off said writer in self defense.

On certain attempts of style:

"He combs his hair with a washcloth."

On the insults of aging and limited mobility:

"I could fool anything but a flight of stairs."

On the fact her doctor is moving her office right across the street from her apartment:

"I won't be late if there's no red light."

And last, but not least, on our favorite actor:

"He's a walking sex experience."

GUEST ARTIST: DANA - Portrait of Diana

A photo taken of Dana as she read to me this new piece.



Diana was the glamorous girl of our set – slim, elegantly dressed in classically tailored clothes made for city doings. Her soft grey hair was tucked into a black beret and her boots were impeccably polished. Her regal posture was the result of strengthening her back for “la danse”. Ballet was her life until she retired, although she never offered personal details of her own story.

She mainly talked about her dance career and the beauty of attempting to reach perfection. She encouraged the rest of us old gals to constantly exercise in order to maintain our balance and lose weight. As we struggled through our 70’s and 80’s with our canes and walkers, she was a real contrast to us all as well as to herself. Usually dressing in black turtleneck sweaters or white ones, her head looked misplaced. Incorrectly sitting atop a youthful frame, her head seemed to belong to a much older woman. She decided to volunteer at Lincoln Center to accommodate bewildered patrons. Eventually she became eligible herself for unsold seats to musical or dance performances.

Her chief defect was her poor neglected teeth; she had long since lived on a pitiable income requiring her to survive on Social Security checks. Her diet consisted of canned soups and snacks. Like many living so fugally, her beloved orange tabby cat Rothbart, named after the evil conjurer in “Swan Lake”, ate much better. To quell her appetite, Diana ate hard candy. From time to time, each of us would attempt to invite her out to lunch. We usually met for a monthly Chinese lunch to celebrate our various birthdays. When Diana decided to join us, she would order sparingly.

A few months ago, at four in the morning, Dian felt the symptoms of heart attack. She managed to open the front door and lie down in the hallway. Then she rolled over and over until she reached the door of a familiar neighbor who awakened and drove her to Beth Israel Hospital’s Emergency Room. We all began calling the hospital as well as at home trying to find Diana. Jean of our group found her in her hospital room. Diana asked her visit again soon and to bring pen and paper and a small bottle of Chanel #5. Diana also commented on how delightful it was to get three trays of food daily delivered to her beside. She did miss her beloved Rothbart, now housed with her neighbor.

Once again, we lost touch with Diana. Then word came from a co-worker at Lincoln Center who had tried to locate her. “Diana is no more. Probably a follow-up heart attack.” We were all grief-stricken. And we all felt guilt pangs that we had let her languish in the hospital and then didn’t follow up on where she might have gone afterwards. Hospitals in New York City close a case record when the patient is discharged. Germany, on the other hand, keeps a police registry of every citizen’s change of address.

Several friends and I met a month ago to have an impromptu memorial. We talked about our lovely colleague whose passing was unexpected and, of course, foretold our own.

It was almost Christmas when Jean called me to say she had just opened her mailbox and jumped when she saw a letter from Diana. Diana had been in a rehab facility for weeks and had made enough progress to be sent home, blessed home. The mild heart attack healed well but she also had needed surgery to remove a defective toe. In rehab, she had to learn how to use a walker and a cane.

We had been so shaken by the awful news of Diana’s death that we were scarcely able to believe she had returned to our lives again. We almost resented being emotionally rocked for no reason, but decided to marvel at the turn of events and never mention it to Diana. Diana, having located her address book, felt a surge of longing to join her old friends again. She never realized that she had emerged from the chrysalis of an iconic departed ballerina into a newly reborn old woman, just like us.

Sunday Memory: GUEST ARTIST DANA - The Scent of Sandalwood

New work from Dana!



Whenever I travel to Europe, I feel I am walking in the footsteps of former inhabitants who lived in ancient towns before they became cities. The old ghettos, for example, are steeped in history and stimulate my imagination. I seem to be searching for my previous life in another century, a kind of deja vue moment. When George and I arrived in Seville, Spain, I found it.

We were directed to an old quarter, which formerly housed the ghetto where all of Seville’s Jews were once confined. Street names were ghetto names. But the ghetto itself had vanished. All that remains is a Kasbah-like warren of little winding streets and cul-de-sacs twisting and turning and literally swallowing us up in its labyrinth. As night fell we began to feel ill at ease. There were fewer and finally no one on the dimly lighted streets. I may have recognized where I once had lived in another time, but now felt trapped in a time warp. I couldn’t recall the area outside of the ghetto, which was dangerous. After curfew, one risked arrest.

We walked by an open patio that seemed to beckon us in. Through the entrance gate sat a large brightly illuminated sofa, empty but waiting. For us? We whispered to each other “Don’t go in there. “ Where was its light coming from? Was this some kind of entrapment?

We lingered on the sidewalk wondering at the sofa’s elegant invitation. I thought we should continue up the street. George noticed the seductive aroma of sandalwood, and refused to move.

We bickered for a few moments until we heard the rustling of a taffeta skirt. Upon turning our attention back to the sofa we were surprised to see a Matisse-like odalisque wearing that taffeta skirt. Aside from multi-colored glass necklaces she was utterly bare on top. Her presence explained the purposed of the sofa.

I knew from George’s glistening eyes what he was thinking. And it was obvious what he was feeling.

So, what the hell.

Yes, I walked on and somehow found an exit in the general direction of our hotel. Eventually, George did the same.

Back home, whenever I saw that glisten in George’s eyes, I'd put on my false eyelashes and a splash of sandalwood.

Encore: GUEST ARTIST: DANA - On Parenting (Or How I Survived Motherhood)

Tuesday, November 3, 2009


"I sat in the playpen as they wrecked the house."

Dana, with her grandson, her great-grandson and her son posing for a picture being taken by her other son.

Encore: GUEST ARTIST: DANA - The Pot Of Gold

Another gem from Dana.


Marian and I had high expectations. We were about to go to see a one-woman theatre piece calls “the Amish Project”. It referred to the tragic murder of thirteen school kids whose Amish classroom was invaded by an armed lunatic.

At first I refused to join Marian in reliving such a terror. But word came from several critics of its unique value. Travel plans were finalized, and I was nearly dressed when Marian called at the last moment to tell me that there was a long, steep flight of steps from the street entrance up to the theater.

I am too disabled to manage those damn steps.

Marian decided to go alone. This was another time I had been rebuffed by architecture. Suddenly my missed evening struck me harder than the play’s tragic subject. I moped regretfully the remainder of the afternoon.

Stepping outside on my terrace to relieve the blues, I was thrilled to see a dazzling rainbow its enormous arc embracing the sky from mid-Manhattan to north Brooklyn, I began shouting to the strollers eleven stories below to “look up, look up, a rainbow!” But no one heard me. I was the sole beneficiary of the splendor. I was Finian himself.

Sunday Memory Encore: Two! Two! Two Memories In One!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

When terribly young there was Dana as a beacon.

And when life required strength there was Veselka's Ukrainian Borscht.

How lucky I am that these days I have both.


***

Dana's profile and other short pieces are:

Tuesday, March 24, 2009
"If I Bring Forth What Is Inside Me, What I Bring Forth Will Save Me"

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
"One Day I Wrote A Sentence"

Thursday, June 25, 2009
GUEST ARTIST: DANA - The Sad Little Crone

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2009
GUEST ARTIST: DANA - Wisdom of the Ages

Encore: GUEST ARTIST: DANA - "One Day I Wrote A Sentence"

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

How Dana, Guest Writer, started writing.

Ghost Longing (excerpt)

“His homecoming every night was thrill enough for me because his physical presence was sexually provocative. I loved the intimate challenge of living with a stranger. Present, but not completely knowable.”

Encore: GUEST ARTIST: DANA - The Sad Little Crone

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Another one of Dana's short New York stories.


I seem to have trouble visualizing accurately how my face betrays my age. Especially when I hit a patch of exhaustion and my color drains completely. On my birthday I went to Trinity Church to hear a concert by a group called Alhambra. They specialize in Sephardic songs accompanied by very exotic instruments. Sensuous and rhythmic 14th and 15th century melodies. When they ended, I was caught in their spell. But hunger and fatigue had to be remedied. I crossed the street to a dingy pizza joint and ordered a large orange juice. Then I plopped down at a corner table to simply rest. I closed my eyes for a moment and awoke suddenly when a young Asian woman poked her nose in my face and asked tenderly “Are you all right?” followed by, “May I buy you some lunch?”

My first thought was “I really must buy a new winter coat. My God, I must look dowdy."

“No lunch, please.” I told her I was enjoying my birthday but just needed a little rest. Then I stood up and left the place. She followed me asking where I lived and how I was planning to travel home. I kept reassuring her that I would take the subway, as usual. She offered to escort me down the steps. I refused her kind help Then she put something in my right hand and ran into the crowd. I opened my hand to find a neatly folded $5 bill. I was truly shocked but also touched and somewhat ashamed at her judgment of me. Her compassion brought tears to my eyes. So that’s how I appear to her!

When I got home I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. There she was – the dear little old lady or perhaps the sad little crone needing a good meal. I swore I’d save that $5 bill forever. But I broke my vow 4 days later.

Sunday Memory Encore: "If I Bring Forth What Is Inside Me, What I Bring Forth Will Save Me"

Tuesday, March 24, 2009


This is Dana.

Her husband, before he was smart enough to marry her, had, as a teenager, a crush on Florence. When they all grew up, Dana and Florence and their husbands and children lived across the hall from one another on Lewis Street.

I knew Dana was the most beautiful woman I knew. And I knew this before I knew how to tie my shoe. I also knew she knew something about the world that would be essential to my survival. Perhaps it was the beautiful stones from Brazil she gave me after her trip there with her husband to help establish socialist co-op housing. Or maybe it was the tiny little Bolivian dolls given after another trip to continue developing affordable housing in South America. Or maybe it was the story book with real art as illustrations that told me there were more worlds beyond the wall of sound I heard every day from Florence's Steinway.

Whatever it was, what beamed from her heart and soul was a living example of utter enjoyment of every second of every moment to love, eat, laugh, talk, touch, live.

Today, at least 45 years after learning to tie my shoe, Dana is still the most beautiful woman I know. Or at least Number One of a very short list. And today she brought forth a story she had poured into devastating poetry. She said that when she wrote that story it saved her life. Once again, so many decades later, I learned of a world beyond the horizon of my own fear, my own pain, my own disbelief.

*The fortune cookie fortune Dana reads every morning as she fixes her hazelnut coffee.

A Birthday Celebration of the Writer Dana

Dana celebrated a birthday the other day. She was NOT 89 years old, she stated firmly. That year had just finished. On this auspicious day, she was beginning her 90th year.

Encore posts of Dana's sharp and dazzling short stories as well as new works will be presented on HER NEW YORK over the next couple of weeks.

Guest Artist: It Was Doug's New York

Doug is from Long Island. That and his niceness can't be helped.

During tax time he travels back to Long Island to help out at his brother's accounting office, staffed almost entirely by women. On Saturday, they all bring their children. And words take on wonderful new meanings.

Sunday Soon-To-Be-A-Memory: The History of a Couch

It had been purchased by Susie’s then-girlfriend in an effort to keep two people in one spot.

Didn't work.

Susie’s incoming new wife - determined to clear their new home of old memories - sawed it in half so it could fit in the tiny elevator of their 5th Street apartment and get it the hell out of their new life together. The newly married couple walked both pieces up to my apartment eight blocks away and stuffed it into my tiny elevator.

Having never had a real couch before, I was thrilled and watched in awe as the new wife power-tooled the two pieces back to their former glory.

In the ensuing decade and then some, sex and love and happily-ever-after were attempted on its cushions.  Art was marveled at from its comfort, stories were written and, when sick, it was the best place to curl up and become a little girl again.

Until, without enough warning, life flooded with unending loss.  That couch became a refuge to hide in, often with take-out and TV to numb and soothe everything from too much of too much.

In the midst of all this, Jupiter the kitten unexpectedly arrived.

Those first few weeks, it was the perfect place for him to hide under when – little and frightened – he waited for me, the mommy-can-opener, to return back from some unnecessary errand and love and feed him.  Not necessarily in that order. 

However, as several house guests observed, when I wasn’t home, he retreated back under and waited. 

Months passed.  Loss didn’t bang around my head so much.  Jupiter got bigger and less frightened and soon, that couch became the place for me to hang out on and for him to hide his favorite toys under, including my favorite pen, my reading glasses, hair bands for the gym, the floss, plastic rings from bottles, all the thousands of jiggling bell balls I kept buying him, the catnip mouse, the catnip bird, the catnip sausage...

And before we knew it, enough time had passed that I didn’t need to curl up with take-out, and Jupiter was so big he couldn’t even fit a paw beneath the broken frame.  Instead, the beat-up couch became his warm corner to catch up on his beauty sleep as I did paperwork for a better future.

One day, the couch just became too broken for both of us – an aging tushy and a big-bone cat.  Hammers and crowbars dismantled it into small pieces and strong hands stuffed them into our tiny elevator. Me and Jupiter watched decades of history no longer welcomed and no longer needed depart to the basement garbage room.  

A new couch was coming soon, second-hand like the first, but bought from strangers, more functional, a bit smaller, not so broken.  I swept and mopped the dusty empty space, making it ready for that new couch.  And as I did, I also made it ready for new memories and a new history – one that me and Jupiter would both get to choose.

University Of The Streets: Millenium Style

It used to be you learned from running around the city and taking a good look at it. Florence would whip on her glasses and stare if there was something she wanted to know.

Then the the city got nice and the streets got safe. There was nothing to learn on them except how to zip around a gaggle of tourists clogging the sidewalks or the new residents who, like the tourists, clogged the streets but at least shared with the world interesting cell phone conversation.

So imagine the delight and the wonderment when the best scientist in the city, and thus the world, gave a small group of important looking people a 101 overview of astronomy, a course I had failed at least twice at City College. He did this while interweaving the history of pollution into the stars and telling us how Grand Central Terminal wasn't a station but a terminal.

I don't care if I don't understand what the Earth Wobble is. I'm just thrilled that, like Florence, I stared in delight and without an invitation stood close to learning something new on the streets.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place There Is...

In these recent years, there had been times even an old beloved song cut too close and deep to what was left of me. Yet quiet became unbearable. That El wrote her music as ferociously as I wrote story - a sword cutting through personal silence - brought me respite from this high speed mess called life, and led me out of my own Egypt and into a promised land of new possibilities and new stories.

Sunday Memories Encore: Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Gloom of Night...Until Suddenly...

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2010


None of us really understood that things were changing for Florence.

She seemed as she always had been. Teaching cooking walking arguing fuming eating investigating practicing devouring life intrepidely sallying forth into the world as the force of nature that she was

The rare cracks were easy to ignore, more often than not camaflouged in the heart and soul of her New York.

This was the first crack I suddenly remembered ignoring.

A brief moment after a snowstorm on the corner of 6th street and Avenue A. Between her and the curb a pile of snow.

Suddenly she couldn't traverse it. Suddenly she didn't know what to do. Suddenly she was old.

Then suddenly some young men came up to her, picked her up, carried her over the mound and gently placed her on solid sidewalk before vanishing into the crowd.

She laughed and laughed and laughed about it because the sudden ride erased the sudden reality she could not longer climb her own mountains.

Birth

I wondered where she was at this age. My sister, doing the math, figured out Florence had just begun the life she had always wanted to live - on her own, practicing her art and dancing with girls.

There was nothing left to do but thank Florence for her labor 52 years ago, give gratitude for the day, and in the evening enjoy the company of friends and family who had witness my own journey to living as I had always wanted to.

Photo by E. Smith

Happy Meal

It had been a long while since this dinner had been attempted. More than time had to pass. The space for joy had to be carved out again and serenity and love had to be invited back in.

Along with the chicken, wine and cupcakes, a friend's cheese rice casserole was a new addition, perfect to herald in this next new year which, as the night flew by, was punctuated by a puzzled cat and talk around the table of Christianity in teen literature, the elections in Sudan, the eccentricities of certain writers, and the bravery of family who, during Jim Crow days, sat at Woolworth lunch counters to claim the right to eat at a table of their choosing.

Sunday Memories: Tranformation

This is a room at the 14th Street Emanuel Y. Once it was the room we teenagers ruled just as the Vietnam War was ending and we were singing protest songs while shooting pool. The table was tilted and I ruled my advantage while eying the boy I liked.

Now on Friday nights, forty years later, a warm and intimate congregation does Shabbat services where, through the God of their understanding they call forth the spirits of justice.

The Little Men's Store on 14th Street That Could

It's the size of one of the bathrooms at the huge chains further west. But nobody carries what this store carries. Suave shirts, sharp pants, jewel colored sweaters and elegant shoes for clubs not listed in Time Out or websites catering to the hunt of hidden New York.

Light In The Darkness On A Federal Holiday

Chamber Street, New York City at 10:30 p.m.

Sunday Memories: More Traces of Love

Her chair for watching Her New York.

Mi Butsadan Es Su Butsadan

It means the home of the Buddha.

And where else do any of us live but in a butsadan, for we are all a Buddha in our own way and right.

The Aftermath of Revolution

Florence had once said of working one's art, "You have to train for that."

So today my comrade and my friend, Josslyn and I, as we have every year for 15 years, sat down to prepare another year of daily training.

One pot of espresso, one pot of drip coffee, two pots of tea, a huge salad, two chicken breasts, four kinds of dressing, one box of cookies, one orange, a bag of barbecue soy chips, and many glasses of water later, we chose new language never before used to describe our journey ahead.

We are, not will be.

We do now, not someday.

We demonstrate "I am" right here.

The revolution will not be televised. It happens with each breath we take.

***
The Disciples of Soul

The First Step

Metamorphosis

Sunday Memories: Traces of Love

The Delegate's counter until recently.

It Was Her New York: The Angel of 14th Street

This is the Angel of 14th Street.



Her family came from Sicily to the East Village a long time ago. This was before it was the East Village.


Then it was just 14th Street or 12th Street or Avenue A. Then it was just the new home. But when they got finished with it, it was a neighborhood.

This is in the back of the building on 12th Street. This is her great great-grandmother holding her grand-uncle.


The great-grandfather owned the butcher shop on 11th and A. The great-grandmother worked in a dress factory on the lower east side. His money went to support the family. Her money went to savings. Soon they had enough to buy the butcher shop. And then after that, they bought 173 Avenue A (now a hip restaurant), moved the butcher shop there, expanded it into a little grocery store and opened a pizzeria next door. Everyone in the family worked in those and lived upstairs on the first floor.

Her uncle behind the counter at the butcher-grocery shop.


When he was five, the Angel's dad was put in the window of the pizzeria to toss the dough. Everybody knew everybody.

Her grandfather and her dad in front of the Automat when it was still on 14th Street.


Another great-grandfather, the cobbler on 13th Street also owned his own building. He went to all the other building owners and said "We need a church for our Sicilian order."


You know that church on Avenue A and 12th Street? Mary Help of Christians. That was the doings of the great-grandfathers of the Angel of 14th Street. Every uncle, aunt, parents, kids got baptized, married, everything there. Here her grandmother and grandfather are getting married.

But things change and the A&P came in and small grocery stores stores went out. The rents at 173 Avenue A didn't cover the expenses and soon the family sold, moved, disbursed. The Angel's family moved up and out. To Stuyvesant Town. She lives there still.

I asked, one New Yorker to another, what's one thing in this apartment you have lived in almost as long as I have lived in mine, that to you is New York?

"The step stool," and she pulled it out to show the life it had lived along side of her.

And then I asked, one New Yorker to another, where she'd go if she could go anywhere. "Get me off 14th Street! Life has got to be bigger than 14th Street."

And then we laughed because we knew we lived where the rest of the world wished it did.

Radical Acceptance

37th Street at 2:00 A.M.



What if, the book asked, you accepted life, right now, just as it is?

In all its emptiness and stillness, aloneness, and solitary rests, dark corners and brief pockets of light...

What if...

Sunday Memories: It Was...

City Hall R Train Stop, 2:00 A.M. New Years Day



After sidestepping puddles of proof teenagers shouldn't drink and avoiding the belligerent couple who, in their very un-New York style, complained there were no cabs to Astoria, we stood quietly on the platform, relieved that, just two hours ago, the last twelve months were finally a thing of the past and a history we could now leave behind.

It was the best of times, it was the worse of time...

It was now just memories.

"Good-bye Old Girl..."*

It started before Aunt Ruth died.

The Laundrymat on 13th Street, now an expensive dessert place of cereal flavored milk, was packed with cheap, big machines in a small crowded concrete storefront. It was run mostly by the Russian wife, and occasionally by her husband but never by her son who looked like her in sideburns. Tons of quarters were poured into plastic dishes for the machines and little boxes of soap were for sale under the always-on TV.

Just like an old bar, it was packed every day with its regulars. All the Chinese extended families from 12th Street, the differently-able adults from the residence on 2nd Avenue, a couple of former drinking buddies of mine from 13th Street, and the growing post NYU market-rate tenants who more often than not dropped their bags of dirty clothes off to be done for them.

Keeping my clothes clean and pristine hid the fact they were old or third-hand or that I couldn't afford new ones. So that laundrymat was important to me. I nodded to the same folks every week, jockeyed with frenemies for a dryer or a washer, caught up on my People Magazine reading and commended my favorite young man from the residence on his detergent pouring technique. (He was most proud he could do his own laundry.)

And then disaster struck. Someone's ballpoint pen stuck in a machine ruined most of my carefully preserved clothes. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened. But when I complained to the son he told me it hadn't happened, even while staring at Jasper John-like streaks on a beige windbreaker.

Then almost immediately after that, Aunt Ruth died and left me some money - just enough to buy my own washer-dryer unit.

Suddenly, like a few of my better off neighbors, I had the means to put myself in the realm of utter rich luxury. I was going to be able to cross over into a comfort of living I never could have imagined ever.

The minute my washer-dryer combo unit was installed I immediately started doing all the laundry I could gather, load after load after load. I forced myself to stop only because a friend was doing a reading at the Astor Place Barnes and Noble, now a luxury, upscale gym. The minute the reading was over I rushed back to do more laundry.

In the next 15 years, I loved that combo washer-dryer more than I loved several boyfriends. There was only one I loved as much and we happily did each others' laundry until the day he left.

Then some years ago, something broke and the washer tub tilted and groaned and scarcely swirled.

The repair guy, warning me never to leave the house while doing a load, quoted a number that was beyond my budget. Still, even half turned on its side and barely rotating, the washer kept my still modest collection of clothes pristine for a couple of more years. I thought it, like laundry with that man I had loved, would go on forever, regardless of broken pieces and limited abilities.

Until tonight. A simple load thrown in produced a flood from the insides. There was no more denying. My beloved little washer was tired. I coaxed another load on a gentler cycle but I could tell there was nothing left it could do.

For friends who grew up with such an appliance in their homes, my attachment to this has been a bit odd. But perhaps it is similar to say a kid in the suburbs getting his or her driver's license or their first car. It is a mark of coming of age. For other than that time of laundry and love, it has been my greatest success at bringing comfort and care into my home.


Damn Yankees

Goodbyr old friend
My old friend
There's somethin' I must let you know
I haven't said it much
I guess I've lost my touch
But, my old girl, I love you so

Knockin' On Heaven's....

These were the doors of childhood walks, parents meandering behind, sister somewhere and me running ahead seeking ways that led to hope.

Sunday Memories: Visiting Santa

Why my Jewish parents did this or what they were thinking will forever remain a mystery.

Every year when the blinking lights went up and the store windows filled with moving animals, toys and people, my mother and father, my sister and me would leave the lower east side where nary a Christmas tree could be found and head to Macy's to look at all the Christmas decorations.

In those days, the corner window squeezed in between the Nedicks doors had a special Santa throne. We would wait in the freezing cold and then he'd suddenly appear out of the chimney or a beautifully wrapped box and the crowd would go wild as he waved through thick glass that blocked the sound of our cheering or his 'ho ho ho's.

He also lived on the 8th or 9th floor in Santaland. We may have visited him on more than one occasion but I only remember this one time.

I was in fifth grade and it was not going well. Especially math. I was worried. My father, I think, brought me up to Santaland which for some strange reason was almost deserted. I didn't quite get the "ask Santa for presents" deal. I knew it was my dad or my mom who produced the eight days of Chanukah presents. And our God which we never discussed was busy with plagues and lion dens and Israel.

I was kinda big to be climbing onto Santa's lap, but desperate times call for desperate acts. There was only one thing I really wanted that couldn't be gotten anywhere except from someone who made happy dreams come true.

I perched my ten year old self on his knee, and when he asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I told him. I want to pass math.

It recently occurred to me, 40 plus years later, that maybe he didn't hear many requests like that. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable. Passing math was beyond my own abilities, asking my parents for help was beyond theirs and our God was busy with more important things. It was going to have to be up to Santa.

As if it had already happened, he decreed, "You'll pass math."

And so it came to pass that when fifth grade ended many months later, I had passed math.

"She's Leaving Home"

The West Side Train Yards - soon to be luxury high rises.

Before the rare purchase of that car, it used to be trains, subways or a Greyhound were the only way out, that is if we had to leave.

Airplanes were as exotic as suddenly living in a Hollywood movie. Beyond imagination. So we didn't imagine. Unless there was a death in the family in a very far away place like California and then only one of us got to go only once.

But besides death, the annual trip to Philadelphia to see aunts, uncles and cousins was about it.

After reading that Bach had lived and died within 60 miles of his birthplace I swore to my mother or my sister or my dad that I would never do that. I was going to go far and away and die some place that proved I had left.

Those train yards and those trains look like what my feet could do if I had kept my promise.

A Day In the Life...

That section of the subway had always been a tunnel, rough concrete, bleak light and often empty except for those not lucky to have a home or another way to make the connection between the BMT and the IRT or IND. If you could get to the Port Authority another way you usually did.

Then they made Times Square pretty and that meant the subway too. Beautiful tile and picturesque murals. Even the bands got upgraded.

Saturday night, I had heard the strains of a band banging out Beatles drift down to the platform on my way uptown to another attempt of joviality.

On the way back down, I found myself in the now pretty tiled and brightly lit tunnel. There at the mouth was a motley crew of men and one woman crowded together, her in a Santa hat doing bass lines like nobody's business as the Beatles' A Day In The Life poured into space once too dismal to walk.

The words of suicide and desire and then that last chord never ending of both feelings followed all of us rushing to the BMT line.

SUNDAY MEMORIES: COUNTING THE MIRACLE OF LIGHTS

On our side of the Williamsburg Bridge there were barely any electric menorahs in our windows. Our menorahs, old brass or faux silver with blue inlays to represent Israel, lived on tables and had old melted candles of muted colors, candles bought in the same blue box made by the same company from any store on the Lower East Side.

So it was the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge that every year as it got colder and colder I would watch carefully. There, the tall projects would burst, window by window, into brilliant colored lights rarely seen in the homes I knew. I counted them, like counting flowers in a garden.

Mechanic's Alley

Near where Gramma, Bubbie, Aunts, Uncles, Mom, Dad and many friends lived



The roar of the trains on the bridge is so constant it becomes the sound of silence. Whoever lives on this block truly lives in this city for there's no space for anything but Her New York.

Same City Different Camera: Increments on Night Stairs

A friend from the neighborhood said, "When it comes to healing, there are no elevators. You just gotta take it one step at a time."