365 Memories

Warning: the content of this post is not for the faint. On our way to and from a baseball game today (the New York–Penn Minor League), my son and I crossed New York Harbor on one of the cheerful orange boats that make up the Staten Island Ferry fleet. The ride was fabulous, passing Lady Liberty on calm waters, and the second round-trip we've made on the S.I. Ferry. I hope we'll do much more of this. The thing about the trip, though, was that it brought up a not-so-pleasant memory of another ferry ride, in June of 2006. My son was three years old then, and my parents were celebrating their ruby (fortieth) wedding anniversary. Despite how not romantic it might seem to celebrate a wedding anniversary with a daughter, son-in-law, and three-year-old grandchild in tow, this was how my parents wished to celebrate: with a family vacation to Block Island, Rhode Island. I had never been there, though I had heard wonderful things. The island lived up to its reputation—it was charming, l...

It's mid-May and gray today. Unseasonably cool temperatures. Hard to recall days of sunshine and nothing doing, but that's really all I'm fit for in my wishful-thinking mode. So what I remember is this: Warm sand between my toes, finally. Fifteen years old, the thaw of my first real Michigan winter; snow and icicles gone, rain and mud gone, and the sun working its late-spring magic on my sour, pale-skin self. My school at the time was situated between two lakes, adjacent to State Park property. In the spring, shanties for ice fishing gave way to calm blue water, gentle waves carrying sparks of light. Between or after classes, I would head with friends to a two-story, yellow-painted structure by a small patch of beach—the boat launch location for summer camp students. Throughout the year, we'd head there to talk or not talk, to smoke or not smoke, to sulk or to smile as our mercurial moods demanded, and very often to listen to music. We listened to a lot of classic rock ...

I drove into Stonington , Maine, for the first time under cover of night. Still on the interstate when darkness fell, I had no way of knowing what would meet my eyes in the morning. Night up in Maine makes a city dweller rethink darkness completely. When was the last time I had driven on streets without streetlamps? Only the car's headlights to guide me down the twisting coastal road of 15 South, heading to Blue Hill, then farther down and over the bridge to Deer Isle; down the eastern length of the island to Stonington at its tip. In darkness, the senses of sound and smell are heightened: rolling down the window, the aroma of pine came in on a current of cold air that carried with it also a chorus of insect song. Due to my late arrival in Stonington , keys had been left for me in an envelope in a box at the office of the inn where I was staying. Tired, I dispensed with the necessary bedtime tasks, turned off the overhead light, and saw a single rippling gleam on the water. I slep...

It's raining again. I love the sounds of the city in the rain: the slip slap of wipers, the swoosh of tires on wet pavement, the tapping of drops blown by the wind against my high-rise windows. I relish the sounds—plus the sight of taillights and neon dragging their long, rippling reflections through the blacktop of the avenues—but I confess I've become a curmudgeon about getting wet. I love the rain most when I'm warm and dry inside. When did that happen? I hadn't realized. I'm sure it was my son in his big rubber boots and his slick jacket; my son who, despite loving the thing, never wants to take his umbrella out when it's raining—I'm sure it was his enthusiasm for puddles and his wanting to stick his tongue out to catch the drops that made me see how old I've become, if not in years necessarily then sometimes in attitude. Who is this person, cursing the feel of cold water seeping through an ill-sealed sole? Who is this person carrying an umbrella? I ...

(a farce in three acts, with epilogue) It's a rainy Monday in New York, and my head's in a foggy, transitional space. Having flown back from Toronto on Friday and having passed the weekend in, well, weekend activities, today's the first day of the back-to-work routine. Maybe, then, what with the rain and travel and a dose of escapism on my mind (which always comes when I'm processing monthly bills), it makes sense that the memory arising now is a legendary—and very watery—family story from our New York/Pan Am days. Go back in time to the mid-1980s. I can't get a better fix on the year than to say it was probably in the 1984-85 range. There's been some dispute as to whether, at the time of this story, we were living in a New York apartment (a company owned one-bedroom at Museum Towers on West 53rd Street) or whether our farcical round-trip airport excursion was made from a NYC hotel (which I think would have been the InterContinental ). In any event, my parents a...

It's Saint Patrick's Day, and if a country could talk, today America would say, "Pinch me, I'm Irish," just as many of its citizens do entreat, whether the claim is legitimate or not. (Here I confess, I never did understand the pinching bit.) On March 17, you may as well just stick an honorary O' in front of your name, call in Irish to work, and set up a pint or two at your local pub. Sláinte !  I am willing to bet that nowhere else in the world could you find a bigger deal made out of St. Paddy's Day, and I can tell you from firsthand experience (details to come) that it's a much greater event (by far) here in the States than it is in the "old country." I'm glad, actually, that this is so. It would seem a bit off-putting—not to mention totally out of an often self-deprecating character—for the Irish themselves, in Ireland, to parade so lavishly on their own behalf. Here, though, especially in my home cities of New York and Chicago (to sa...

The myth we believed, to a certain extent, when we left Chicago and moved to Los Angeles in 1979 was that the weather in L.A. was beautiful in the winter. The weather was not the reason we moved, mind you; it was our consolation prize for uprooting ourselves due to a job promotion (my father's). We assumed that we were leaving our tribulations of harsh weather conditions behind, and in terms of the thermostat, I guess we were. The air temperature in Southern California was undeniably milder. We moved at the end of spring, settled in during the summer, and made it through the "Back to School" season without incident. The end of the year, and the holidays with it, took us by surprise--we were lost without our usual seasonal cues of falling mercury, blankets of white--and our Christmas shopping that year was done in a last-minute rush (we simply couldn't believe it really was December). We rounded a new decade: January 1980, then February. We were living in a house, and ...

When we wanted to get out of Los Angeles on a last-minute weekend trip, we would occasionally go to the desert—to Palm Springs, to Desert Hot Springs. It was more of the same, only much more of it: more sun, more hours by the pool, many more palm trees, drier climate. The only thing there was less of, thankfully, was the city's smog (which you forgot about while living in it on a daily basis, but that you saw unmistakably from the sky if you were flying into LAX on the way home from someplace else). We would take the car, because we were always in our car out there, it's unavoidable, and we'd drive east from L.A. on Interstate 10—excuse me, "on the 10." I don't know which season it was, though probably it was not summer. In my experience, the seasons were always confounded in Southern California due to the weather, which didn't qualify as weather at all as far as I was concerned. After having lived in Michigan, Connecticut, New York, and Chicago, it was ha...

January 1985. At fifteen years old, I was an angry ex-dancer; passion crushed, career shunted. It seemed so true, that statement about not going home again. After being on my own at fourteen, across the country from my parents in order to pursue a dream that didn't work out, there was no question of going back to a "normal" high school, no desire to live at home, despite my parents' support (or maybe because of it—I didn't want sympathy or for anyone to say they'd been afraid this kind of thing would happen). So, I was once again the "new girl" at another boarding school for artists, and that was fine; I could remake myself into anything at all: drama major, costume designer, metalsmith , photographer. Assuming, of course, that my parents and I made it through the whiteout. We had just arrived in Traverse City, Michigan, had found the school some 14 miles away, situated between two frozen lakes, abutting State Park land, and we were heading out to fi...

January 1979.  Thirty years ago—how did that happen?  I was nine and our family lived in Chicago, in an apartment on Commonwealth, a street that ended (or began) at Lincoln Park.  Winter vacation, and all I wanted was snow*.  Snow to make a snowman, snow to have a snowball fight with my father, snow to use my metal saucer and whip down Devil's Hill.  I don't know who named it "Devil's Hill," whether it was someone in my family, or the other kids at school, or maybe it was known that way generally.  It was indeed an evil hill, ripe for sledding and saucering accidents, which thankfully I never had, though I came close once.  I remember waddling (it was hard to do anything else wearing tights, thermal long-johns over that, plus pants and maybe also snow pants) up the steep hill, dragging the saucer.  Up at the top, my dad would help position me, ask for the OK, and give me a good shove off.  Let me tell you there are not many ways to control a saucer racing super f...