One Year's Meat Is Another Year's Poison. Or Piggybank.

Seymour smoked.  Florence smoked.  In those days it was like drinking coffee or putting ketchup on your burger.

When they got married in 1947 or 48, someone gave them a bubble-glass ashtray for a wedding present.

It did its job like the rest of the stuff in the house. 

But then smoking got definitely bad for you, not just kinda a lousy habit, but really really bad.

Florence offered me and Louise $100 or maybe it was more if we didn't smoke until we were old.  Like twenty-one.  Louise made her pay up.

The rest of us quit here and there.  And then finally.

So the ashtray, along with all the other accoutrements of lighting up, had to find a new job.

**

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Gratitude Never Comes Out In The Wash

Some people think fancy cars are the sign of arriving.  Or the right house in the right neighborhood.   The purse that costs as much as a semester at City College.  How about that watch the guy on the  IRT #5 kept talking about LOUDLY, which is how I found out it cost the same as two months of my health insurance...

My favorite watch is the self-winding Timex my dad got for a dollar at a yard sale and the over-size purse I use most these days was $5.99 at a thrift store.  Only later did I find out it was a diaper bag for a hipster-type mom.  And the home I have rented for almost forty years didn't start out in the "right neighborhood" (although how "right" it is now is seriously up for debate). 

What I dream of or wish I had more money for comes and goes - sometimes it's the desire for a weekly massage and sometimes it's the millions  of bucks that could stop the slaughter of elephants while micro-financing thousands of women's new businesses.

But, until those flush days come, what lets me know I've arrived is the thrill of living in a city that has power and water and lets me turn dials and press buttons so I can do laundry in the middle of the night wearing not much beyond my hopes and my pajamas.

 ** Related Posts:

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Sunday Memories: Food On The Run

Florence and I weren't typically close.  We were magnets that either repelled or slapped together at such high speed we were never sure how it would turn out.

So, until she crumpled into an illness we didn't understand and couldn't defy, we didn't talk every day like some mothers and daughters.

However, when we did occasionally check in on the phone or the rare times she'd actually come upstairs after calling from the payphone on the corner, the conversation would meander about until it landed where it always did.

"What did you do today?" I'd ask.

"Ate my way up and down Sixth Avenue," she'd answer.

And then she'd regale me with each and every stop made at each and every fast food place she had seen advertised on TV.  Those commercials she watched at home alone with the television brought in after we had all left to our own lives were as powerful as the stories Dorothy heard about Oz

Striding up and down streets and avenues seeking the next promise of the wizard, she'd barely ever stop and sit.

I, of course, adored food, went to restaurants, sat down, and then emailed friends about what I just ate.

Yet, interwoven in between my rebellion against eating on the run, I often found myself  striding up streets, relishing something in my hand that cost less that a couple of bucks, and just this past night, as I sailed fast across familiar waters, I sat briefly on old benches I had known since I was a kid, dining on something that could have come from Oz. 

**
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Friday's Child Is Loving And Giving: Cool Cat Bob, The Angora!

Her New York is teaming up with Social Tees Animal Rescue!

Every Friday features a wonderful Friday Child that is waiting 

to join someone's family and make their house a home.

Rumor has it that Cool Cat Bob, the Angora inspired the line "Cool Cat looking for a kitty, gonna look in every corner of the city...." 

With his super fluffy silky medium length coat of fur, six-year old Bob is so calm and cool, it's why you can't see his spectacular yellow eyes.  

Social Tees
325 East 5th Street, NY, NY 10003; 
5-7pm Mon to Fri; 
12-4pm Sat & Sun; 
212-614-9653; 
socialteesnyc.org

If you can't adopt him today, he'll be hanging loose and cool at Petco / Union Square Saturday 12-4pm.

***
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When The Wall Welcomed The Woman

The massive change that swept through the house took with it the many things on this room's walls.  A need to start over with empty space so that thoughts could have no boundaries kept those walls bare for years.

At some point, the gift of a Bodhi leaf got hung near the alter.  It was hung even higher after the cat decided it was a toy to knock down.  But the rest of the room stayed open and clear of anything except one's imagination.

Then one day, during a visit with Jutta, the Mariner and I saw this new work and fell in love. 

Jutta didn't want to take money for it because she loves us and doesn't do art for money. But we had to buy it because we love her and art and no one who can do art this good should do it for free.

And the minute it was hung, it was as if it had always been home.

With thanks to the Mariner for the first draft.

**
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**

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:  

COMING SOON FRIDAY'S CHILD (LOVING AND GIVING) 

Her New York is teaming up with Social Tee's Animal Rescue and every Friday will feature a wonderful Friday Child that is waiting to join someone's family and make their house a home.

Stay tuned!

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Encore: Perfect Timing

There's a lot of waiting when it comes to writing and sometimes it can feel like full out avoidance.  However, after a TV-watching-marathon of British women going into labor and giving birth to babies, perfect timing seemed to be more about allowing life to emerge on its own terms, rather than planning and making a schedule.  

Sure, there's lots you can do to help, like bouncing on a ball or screaming or eating chocolate pudding -  all strategies that work for both birthing and writing.  But, mostly you gotta bow to the forces that be, because they're just going to do what they need to do.

So, while allowing words to emerge, an encore about what Perfect Timing sometimes looks like.

Originally posted Tuesday, December 27, 2011

PERFECT TIMING

Right before it all happened

The frame was too high on Dana's new bed. Getting up was like rock climbing and getting down was the Giant Salom but without the snow.

So we ordered a new one, thinking it would arrive in a couple of days.

But then the new computer system didn't work. So the frame arrived a week later.

We thought oh so we'll come down on that day.

But then Dana asked we come the next day.

I promised we'd be there at such and such a time, but of course we got there almost an hour later.

Then the Mariner couldn't get the frame to line up and I didn't help by insisting that one side was longer than the other when in fact it was just angled more like a trapezoid and he was trying to re-angle it in between me whipping out a 12 inch ruler once used in PS 110 by Dana's son to prove that in fact that side of the bed frame was longer.

Finally the bed fit perfectly and Dana could sit down on it without any athletic training.

She insisted we stay for lunch and have tea and kaiser rolls, herring and lox, cream cheese and butter, and lots and lots of rugelach. The apple pie we passed on.

There was no way we could use the frame that was too high. It was pointless to keep it. But it was a really good frame and no one wanted to throw it out. So the Mariner taped up and stuck a piece of paper on it that said "free bed frame! new!"

Before we headed down to the communal recycling room, Polly the cat needed love. "I want a picture of that!" Dana said. So the Mariner rummaged through my crowded bag of screwdrivers and shopping bags, found the camera case, pulled out the camera and took a picture. The second after he clicked the shutter, Polly had enough love and jumped down.

I forgot the right elevator was the shabbos elevator, stopping on every floor from 1 to 20. So we got off on the 14th floor and waited for the not-for-shabbos left elevator. The numbers let us know whoever had gotten on at the 12th floor was being detoured up to us.

We stepped in with our almost brand new but too high bed frame and there was an almost coordinated, neatly dressed, middle aged couple, laundry stuff in hands, annoyed their trip down had been interrupted with a brief trip up.

Until they saw the frame.

"Are you giving it away?" they both asked.

"Yes! Do you want it?" asked the Mariner.

"Yes! We need one!" and without much ado, he handed the couple the barely used, month old, too high bed frame.

**
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***

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:  

COMING SOON FRIDAY'S CHILD (LOVING AND GIVING) 

Her New York is teaming up with Social Tee's Animal Rescue and every Friday will feature a wonderful Friday Child that is waiting to join someone's family and make their house a home.

Stay tuned!

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Sunday Memories: In The Garden Of Eden There Are Stars Up Above

As a little girl, I never looked up at the stars because there weren't any there.  They only existed in children's books.  I didn't even know what a constellation was, that complex relationships between each star, until I was a teenager at a music program in the middle of what felt like a primeval forest.  The meeting didn't go well, especially after I was told all those stars were already dead and we were just getting the news through twinkles thousands of light years old.

But a constellation of little moments and brief memories suddenly splayed against a busy life. 

The little baby girl toddling fiercely down Second Avenue, proud parents dressed smartly in Expensive Bohemian, beaming proudly and me grinning at the baby, but realizing they wouldn't know what it would be like to have every single person on the street know that baby's business until it was in its fifties.

And that made me think of Gary, who when he was little living in the tough housing projects on the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge, would look into the Courtyard and think, "Oh this must be the Garden of Eden."  After his family moved in, there was nothing he or B. or any of the other siblings could do without his parents hearing about it.  Even after he moved to the East Village, even after he moved back to Grand Street, even after that time in Israel, even after... Everybody knew everything.

Even living in his own apartment in a different building than his family on Grand Street his mother called one day, recounting the several people who asked why he had come home so late the night before.

Watching that baby, I remembered the last time  me and Gary spoke, bumping into each other on Second Avenue.  He was going to attempt to fit into the world he had been born into but had never quite felt at home in.  He died before it could happen.

There had to be a picture of the Courtyard, I thought, the place where nothing we did went unnoticed.  I remembered there was one of me an almost teenager, but the only one I could find was me in the little skirt I loved so much and wore so proudly.  It, like almost everything else we wore, was a hand-me-down and I remembered the day I understood things were changing because it wasn't fitting the same anymore.  But like so much of those years, I didn't know who to tell and so that moment like so many went unspoken and into a quiet reservoir of silence.

And that made me think of an old friend, recently back in touch, telling me about the moment he claimed the clothes he always knew he was born to wear, not the dresses forced upon him because everyone saw him as a  girl. 

And that made me remember, remember so much of how me or Gary or this old friend were seen and yet unseen, witnessed and yet not known.

Maybe that fierce baby girl would never know what it was like to have billions of eyes on her life, but maybe her parents would always see who she was.

**
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The Manhattan Bridge.

Peering over the railing we could see the Brooklyn one down the river.  That one was like the prettiest cheerleader who was sure to be chosen as Homecoming Queen. 
 

But the Manhattan Bridge was definitely the poet or the artist or the trombone player in the band, the one who didn't look like she had stepped out of a teen magazine.

No. The Manhattan Bridge was the bridge that would, while pretty stayed pretty and got lots of attention, go far and do great things.

 **
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When we leave, I ask myself again.   You, you with all your dreams and passions.  Did you do enough today?

**
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How did Florence and Seymour know soda was so bad for you? 

Somehow they did and that meant that beyond the once-a-week-at-Gramma's, it just wasn't allowed.  Drinking soda was something I watched in other people's worlds or on TV. 

On our rare trips to Katz for a hotdog, Dr. Brown's Cream Sodas were even rarer. So, a lot of time was spent at Katz's water fountain, all the way in the back along the wall, across from the ladies room.  

That magic lever was the closest I'd get to a fountain soda for years.  I gulped glass after glass of water that was crisp and clear and delicious.   Not like the cloudy, luke-warm tap water we had at home.

Just the other night, one of our rare trips to Katz, but this time for a shared brisket sandwich, I had a Dr. Brown's Cream Soda.  After all, I was an adult and I could have anything I wanted.  But, half way into the meal, I was back at the best water fountain in the world.  It was delicious.

**
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Before It Disappears, More Brief Moments

Goglog said most of the 14th Street stretch had been bought by a developer and wouldn't be there much longer, Vanishing New York passed on the news that Applebees and Johnny Rockets were probably headed to Coney Island, and NYU continued to think it owns public land.

There was a story I grew up with, passed around the Lower East Side.  It had happened. In Brooklyn.

A village had been condemned to death by the Nazis.  The villagers picked one person to escape and go tell their story so their deaths would not be in vain.  The man they picked somehow made his way to safety and then to America.  Relatives of the villagers were in Brooklyn and he came and for three days he told the story of the village, the murders, the Nazis.  At the end of the three days, the man died.

We are much luckier than those villagers.   When you don't get shot, sometimes you get to go on to find new ways and create new lives.  But, sometimes, even if you don't get shot, destruction strikes.  I do not want to die after telling the story of my village headed to destruction.  I don't want my village to die either.  But, now it seems more important than ever the story gets told.

Avenue A Bus looks at 14th Street.

Some things have continued on.

The sunset over 37th Street

Allen and Grand.

Back staircases in walk-ups


Real New Yorkers.

But some things didn't.

St. Vincent Hospital, now becoming luxury condos,

Florence.

 **
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Crossing Delancey on the Avenue A

It was rush hour on the Avenue A which is why the walker lady with the sheitel and a hat had rushed the door in front of the wheelchair who was wearing a cap my dad used to wear.

Everyone chimed in with the bus driver for her to move out of the way, but all she heard was noise until he waved her back.

The old man in the wheelchair only had one leg, one eye, an orthodox beard and one friend as old and hairy as he was who wheeled him into the parking spot on the bus for wheelchairs. 

The 4:30, hurtling down to the East River, was packed, what between the teachers and the kids coming home from school, the hospital workers getting out, the errands being finished, the subway riders transferring over.  The wheelchair's friend moved back a bit,  and hanging out by a pole, pulled out his New York Post and started reading.

The walker lady got a seat from someone, one of the single seats along the windows.  The woman behind her, who was fighting middle age with a vengeance, tapped her on the shoulder.  "Your wheels are on my bag."  The walker lady couldn't lift her walker, so finally the middle aged woman moved it for her, hugged her freed bags and glared at me. 

"What could I do..." murmured the walker lady.  Her accent, I hadn't heard it in years, but it was born of diaspora and several languages, one barely spoken anymore and I was suddenly back in the courtyard with the old ladies chortling in this woman's voice "monkey monkey" when B. hung upside on the railing.

Three tiny girls with huge backpacks of school books teetered in the aisle because the driver, no matter how many tattoos he had, was a cowboy.  The walker lady patted her walker seat.  "You wanna sit here? Come.  Sit, sit."

Yeshiva boys with matching loafers got on.  "Hi Ari, you Ok?  You doing OK?" one asked the man in the wheelchair.  "Yeah, yeah," he said, shifting himself in the chair and going back to staring out the window.

The Puerto Rican woman, my age, jeans and a warm parka, grabbed a sudden free seat across the aisle from the walker lady.   Their eyes met.

Beaming smiles and little waves across small space, the Puerto Rican woman asked, "You OK? You doing OK?"  "Nothing to complain about, nothing to complain about, everything good good," the walker lady said, then asked "You? You OK?" "Yeah, yeah.  Everything good." 

An elderly lady with tons of bags got on and eight people jumped up to give her a seat but she refused, instead gave it to the young woman who was blind instead.  No one had noticed the cane, just the pretty face, nicely made up.   The old lady and the young woman spoke Spanish to one another as polite strangers do.

More people got on, more people said hello to one another, more people got up to give more people their seats.  The African-American man, had to be at least 75 or 80 but only from the gray all over, he was very fit, said no, no, I'm fine, thank you.   Even if he wanted to sit down, that generation? Nah. You don't take a seat from a lady.

The little boys in the back being escorted home from school talked loudly to their earnest moms who shopped at Whole Foods and now filled the Lower East Side privatized co-ops with relief because it was affordable housing to them.  One little boy shouted questions that had words he knew you weren't suppose to shout in public.  "Are you pregnant?  Did the house make you pregnant?"  And his tired mom said, "Yes, that's it..." laughing to her friends.

And then Columbia Street came and the wheelchair and the friend and the yeshiva boys got off and suddenly the bus was empty.

Dana was waiting.

I was only half an hour late and there was much to cover.  Boy, was that bus packed and everybody talking, I said. I'll probably write about it tonight.  Well, she replied, you hear the best stories on the Avenue A.

**
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Sunday Memories: Hot Lunch

We were talking about the difference between men artists and women artists when Kosky said, "well, there's much more pressure on women socially."  He wasn't expected to show up or do things or be all available.  He could disappear or send his regrets or not even answer at all and no one would question it.  He was an artist and had important work to do. 

I, on the other hand, had struggled for years to not answer the phone or not show up or not agree to help out.

I thought about that when I pulled out the old skillet this morning.  It was the one I had used several times a week during junior high school.  Home for lunch, I would whip up eggs, dunk in some bread, and fry away on the skillet while Florence kept practicing.  French toast was the only thing, besides a bologna sandwich, I knew how to cook for myself.   

There was nothing unusual about any of this, until much, much later, when I repeatedly heard the anger and judgement about women who chose their vocation over the needs of others.

It made me think of Lucien Freud who was almost herald for his refusal to be part of the many families he created.   His children, at least according to one of his daughters, had to meet him on his terms if they wanted any connection with him.

Cooking up french toast this morning for the first time sine 1972, I thought about how Florence, despite a crippling civil war within, managed to reclaim small spaces in which she could be, not the words of Mom or Wife or Teacher, but herself.  I thought about how in order to save herself, she taught me as much as she could about self-sufficiency and then sent me out into the world quickly so that both of us could survive.

And so, we both did. 

**
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Taking Flight Into The Unknown

Elisabeth singing at the Blue Note

It's not just the stolen walks in between chores-jobs-obligations to commiserate about the blank page glaring back at us or sneaking out again to that movie series, not once, not twice but sometimes even three times no excuses or no explanations needed.

It's not getting that the grind of the tour (unloading the van singing loading the van driving to next gig repeat a billion times) beats staying at home hands down any day.  Or being terrified broke freelancing rather than secure full time working so another stab at that blank page can be attempted. 

It's not even understanding the so-call choice of living so precariously and being whatever this is we are makes sense because to choose otherwise would mean you might as well die inside and we both know a whole lot of the walking dead so no thank you.

It's standing shoulder to shoulder or drink to drink in the middle of a brutal night of loss or disappointment and holding the space for better times so writing and singing can still go on even when everything inside wants to stop.

And sometimes it's even more than that.  It's listening to her song unlock my own words and then filling that blank page with a surprising story.

**
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Going Where Its Warm

 Albert is blind.  But he can find love in three seconds flat.

We had just stopped by Social Tees Animal Rescue's new home on 5th Street ("Right by the Police Station" the sign at the old place said).  The Mariner sat down, interested in patting the adorable French Bulldog hopping about.

He never got the chance.  Before anyone knew what was happening, Albert jumped up and made a home in cozy spaces only I had gotten to visit before.

Obviously Albert had never read a romantic novel or seen a romantic movie where if it was Hollywood, after much loss and anguish there was a happy ending you knew didn't exist, and if it was French, after much loss and anguish there was a miserable ending that only made sense to the French or those committed to misery.

No.  Albert knew that love was warm and always three seconds away.  All he had to do was go forward.  And sometimes, that's all you gotta know - with love, with art, with heart, with life.  Go forward to where it's warm. 

Albert isn't up for foster care or adoption, but there's a bunch of kittens, cats, and dogs who are.  Ready if you are for love being warm and only three seconds away.

**
Jupiter, my three seconds away from love.  That, and any chicken he can get from me.

**

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Clayton's been documenting the lower east side since like forever.  Because when you can prove it happened, nobody can erase you.

Clayton Patterson at the

Angel Orensanz Foundation on Norfolk Street 

There's no one Jewish story from below 14th Street.   There are hundreds and thousands.  

I am not, as someone once suggested, just like the people on Seinfeld or from that movie about my neighborhood.  Nor were any of the people I grew up with.   My mother, my friends' mothers, were complex people, striving beyond the bad jokes about us.

And now, because of Clayton, there's not just one book proving it.  There are three.

**
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Days Like This

photo by E. Lohninger

"One day at a time" is way too long.  I'm only capable of handling 20 minutes at any given moment and that's on a good day.

It is hard to carve and coax love out of one's failed past, broken-hearted role models, and Fred and Ginger movies.  Even An American In Paris offered only fantasy as a road map. (yeah show me a broke artist who picks the poor girl over the heiress....)

But, like time passing or a kid getting taller, its presence, during many twelve hour walks through the city, unfolded imperceptibly until one morning a note sent to a friend recounting the previous twenty-four hours was filled with words like "laughing" and "fun" and "good" and other similar happy descriptions.  There were no recognizable words like "struggle" or "fight" or "confused" or "frustration" or "despair" or "futile" or....

If I hadn't written that note, I would have never known how I had laughed all night (which is just like dancing all night only you get to sit down).   I would have never notice what once was foreign in my life was suddenly present.  I would have never have noticed my life was becoming different from what I had known for so long.

So, imagine my surprise 780,000 minutes later (which is approximately 39,000 20 minute segments) that what once was different now seemed normal. 

Happy Valentine's Day to the Mariner.

**
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A Poem Becomes Her

The picture of her and Baby Boy, snapped quickly with an old Instamatic and real film, has been in each and every old Filofax lugged about in handbags and satchels.  A photo in a phone could never be this loved, bent from being taken out over and over again to show life and love, history and family.

When there is great beauty, there are fewer words.

I keep scooping up pens and cameras, attempting to tell a poem offered by fading light on a city street or a cat's heartbeat, or sorrow and loss, or the inevitable journey people I love take into the unknown.

"There needs to be another word for what we are to each other than family because it is so much better than that," she said recently.

Poem.  Poem works.

 **

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: MINDBENDERS 2 COMING ATTRACTIONS!!!!

 

Read the excerpt, The Man Who Didn't Die from Ted Krever's sequel MINDBENDERS2: UNDER THE RADAR


Ted Krever, author
Video by Adrian Garcia Gomez

Sunday Memories: On The Road

You can't quite see it, but my father, Seymour has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

And you may not recognize it, it now quite redone, but this was a stretch along the East River by the Williamsburg Bridge.

My parents always biked.  Not in any special lane, not with helmets or fancy spandex.  Regular shoes or sneakers.  They had sturdy Raleigh bikes, and an L.L. Bean saddle bag and they went places.

Just married, Seymour turned to Florence and said, let's go! Without gear or extra clothes, they traveled for days.  Later, Florence wrote excitedly to the woman she had always loved, telling her that after several days, their clothes had become unbearably dirty.  Seymour went and bought her an entire outfit of new clothes.  Both of them barely out of poverty, this was a big deal.  (Even after my father had a full time job, my sister and I could count on one hand the times we bought new clothes.)

They travel up and down the Jersey shore and all over the city.  They traveled uptown and across, and when I was 12 or 13, I too took to the road on one of their Raleighs, biking to babysitting and soon, on my own, to City College with my violin strapped to my back.  Occasionally, a cigarette dangling from my mouth.  No helmet, no fancy spandex. Regular shoes or sneakers.

Florence quit smoking in her fifties, but she continued to bike into her late sixties until I think the bike got stolen and she couldn't replace it.  That or we sold it or gave it away because she wasn't wearing a helmet and besides, if you walk, you get to eat along the way.

***
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Sunday Memories:  It Was His New York

Sunday Memories: A Tale of Two Brothers

Subway Rat

I think that boyfriend in 1977 was complimenting me when he called me that.

But here are the things that are normal:

• knowing which door to stand at so I could walk straight out to the street 

• the many ways to get from point A to point B, and if I didn't know, calling Baby Boy (until he was eight years old and got bored with it), because he knew the entire MTA system - buses and subways and could map you from anywhere to anywhere, usually in multiple routes.

• riding without holding on because it was too crowded and the pole was too far away, not realizing until recently that it was just like surfing, just without the cold water or the sharks

• hanging out in between cars in the summer because the Lexington IRT never had any air conditioning in the summer, only in the winter, and it had air conditioning in the winter because it never had heat in the winter (that was the 70's and 80's)

• walking from one car to another, and when the young kid cop stopped me and said "hey that's against the law - didn't you see the sign?" I said, "Oh?  I thought that was just for the tourists."

• NOT knowing which damn color goes with which line.  They're called the BMT, IND and IRT for fucks sake.

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Our Westerns

"He's a cowboy," Florence would hiss.

I'm not exactly sure where she got her terminology.  She was in her sixties the first time she went west of New Jersey.  Maybe, watching westerns as a girl in Bushwick or the Lower East Side, she got the idea that only a cowboy would drive a vehicle reckless and fast through millions of cow-like traffic.

It wasn't until Bucko's blog that it dawned on me that the world of the cowboy was a bit larger than Blazing Saddles and New York City bus drivers.  (I am purposely ignoring the two westerns I was dragged to see in 1981 at the St. Marks Movie theater because they were being screened with irony.)

So, as the M3 bus driver barreled down Fifth Avenue, zipping in and out of billions of cars and taxis and pedestrians and those bicycle rickshaws, imagine my surprise when I heard myself mutter, "Cowboy!" 

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Sunday Memories: Girlfriends

The cat doesn't understand Dutch and only begrudgingly shares his couch corner with her.   He is tolerating our three decades plus ability to spite over 3000 miles of ocean and land in order to talk non-stop about every single person in our lives, whether we both know them or not.  It doesn't matter.  What we do know is the air and light and sound of each others' city, the laugh of the ex-lover and the cooking skills of the current one, the lilt of a family member's voice, the rubble left from a parent's failure at care. 

She is the one, who after Florence died, gently coaxed, "Don't chew," and each time I returned to that night and redid my actions like it would change history, I would hear her.  "Don't chew," I'd repeat and again let go of my delusion I could make the past different just by raging at it.

There is much to cover in her few days in New York.  In between rationing out dozen of pieces of licorice and taking one of our meandering walks that now illuminates another land than the one she visited in 1982, we re-become each other's diaries.  It is too dangerous to commit to any evidence, in Dutch or English, where we have buried the bodies of our many adventures, unless of course we write it as fiction.

So we recount to one another, relieved the memories will die along with us.  She does the remembering of events.   I do the remembering of emotional processes.  It had been a similar division of work when, as young women, we traveled together.  I could remember how, in the appropriate language, to ask where the auto bus was and she could understand the answer.

Now, we are the old ladies we once peered at when we were twenty-two.  We grumble about young people and their cell phones.   We discuss preparations necessary for illness and funerals.  We say, "Leave that for me in your will" or "I will leave that for you in my will".  We try on much different fashion than we did years ago, enjoying styles that only adults used to wear.   We no longer drink Southern Comfort or Jenever.  Although I'm still open to it.  We exchange, no matter what, breakable heavy objects to carry back to home. 

In the whirl of time, we hold each others' footsteps, the ones we took towards love, through loss and then back into unexpected life again, and we bear witness for one another of how amazing and surprising life turned out to be.

***
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"Tonight I can write the saddest lines." - Neruda

Orchard Street

It was the only stoop on the block that still looked familiar.

The Old Normal

The sign on the door said "Careful - wet paint in hallway".   Clearly the work hadn't begun. 

The peeling paint off the wall and the cigarette butts and empty packs littering the stairs - it was just like home when home was anywhere me and my friends could be who or what we were or weren't. 

It makes sense in new nice neighborhoods rising from factories into tri-plex multi-million dollar lofts with triple pane windows and spectacular views that hallways get to change too. 

Before paint and work erased yet another haven, normal to us, a quick glimpse, remembering littering stairs, smoking, and glaring at the people, stepping over kids like me and my friends, as they trudged up and down heading from work to street to more work to life that didn't include multi-million dollar nothing.

Sunday Memories That Become Part of Now

The old chairs inherited from Florence, the beat-up table left by a old friend and roommate in 1979, the table clothes found at yard sales in 1998, the dishes collected over twenty-five years from different restaurant closings, the forks a moving neighbor left up for grabs in the lobby, the vase carried back from Spain in 1988, the serving spoons Florence got from Mrs. Applebaum's apartment when she died in 1981, wine glasses quickly purchased today from the thrift store across the street....

Then me and the Mariner opened the door and let the cat out to greet friends who over two or eight or twelve or 18 or 37 years joined in once again to welcome another birthday.

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Winter Encore: Sunday Memories: A Winter Coat

Originally posted December 4, 2011


Although the date on the picture says "Aug 67" more likely than not my father took this picture in the winter but using the camera sparingly (after all, film was expensive and so was processing) he didn't finish the roll until the summer. So probably every season was recorded in one roll of film.

This was my winter coat for several years.  A couple of sizes bigger than me (of course) and grown into (of course), my father called this my Joseph Coat Of Many Colors.  When the musical came out I became very confused.  THAT coat didn't look like mine.

I also didn't realize that Joseph, as a son of the desert probably didn't need a hood on his.  But this was how I understood this coat, bought second hand or handed down but clearly a coat that that traveled through other lives before reaching me.  I wore it as the mantel of a man in the midst of sibling rivalry but destined to heal his family.  This of course led to many years of therapy.


And these were my parents' winter coats.  Judging from the angle, I must of taken this picture.

Florence was still wearing winter coats then.  I suspect she gave them up around the same time she gave up skirts and men.  Her coat was a Harris Tweed bought probably at Macys or A&S or B. Altmans or Gimbels.  It was expensive.  At some point she relined it.  Forty-four years later, it's still in great shape and I wear it.   Being shorter than Florence was then, I look like Little Red Riding Hood, only without the hood or the red.

My father's coat was, I believe, a Hudson Bay, also very expensive.  Or it  could have been an LL Bean.  It was his winter coat until he moved to  California in the 1980's.  It is still in his closet.  Just in case the  weather suddenly changes.  The last time I checked, it was dusty but  ready to go.  For a brief moment, he and I talked about giving it to my then boyfriend who was unprepared for the North American winters.  However, I suspect he clung to that coat the same way Florence discarded hers.  A reminder of other times and other weather.