Essay #4: Women's March, January 21

A day is usually 24 hours. But last Saturday, January 21, for me lasted from around 7 p.m. Friday night, when my niece Rachael picked me up to drive down to Washington, to about 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning, when we arrived back at my apartment. Here’s what it was like.

            We weren’t awake the whole time; there was some sleeping in the Comfort Inn in Gaithersburg, Md. But I felt our march started at a rest area somewhere in New Jersey where we smiled eagerly at all the women in pink pussy hats and wondered how many others there were also on their way to march.

            We finally made it to our hotel around 1:30 a.m. after detouring into D.C. to drop off Rachael’s friend J. Did more march-goers account for the tour buses there? The desk clerk didn't know, but he’d seen teenagers with Trump caps, and he looked dismayed when he said it.

            Saturday morning we met up with cousin Raechel (yes, the cousins’ names are pronounced the same, but spelled differently) and went to the Shady Grove Metro station, where a line stretched maybe 20 yards. I heard some people waited in line at that station for three hours! But we’d gotten our Metro cards in advance and breezed right in. And got seats because Shady Grove was the end of the line.

            Early on the train filled up with mostly marchers. A couple of women in pussy hats handed out Planned Parenthood stickers to whoever wanted one. One was a librarian, and she and my librarian daughter, Christie, bonded over that. I was holding my sign [[insert pic]] so it was visible, and one man took photos.

            It took an hour to get to Judiciary Square, where I texted another cousin and five other people I knew were there, but we never connected with any of them – too many people! Two were on the other side of the Mall. Niece Rachael wanted to follow her phone’s directions, which I knew, from my years of experience at protests in D.C., would have led us into the thickest mass of the crowd, while I wanted to circle around the crowd, if that was possible. We started off on the “circle around” strategy and passed a sign reading

“You’re so orange, I’ll bet you think this sign is about you.” 

(Some signs I couldn’t get photos of because we were walking and I was terrified of losing my small group.) After a while we made a Port-o-potty stop, where I saw these great shields (literally shields, with straps on the reverse for your arms).

By now it was 2 o’clock, and on my portable radio rally speakers were still on the stage. Marches never start on time.

            Back on Independence Avenue, people were moving in the direction of the White House, and we joined the mass. There were great signs, but now, frustration. Whenever I got out my phone to take a picture, someone walked in front of the sign, or the sign-holder twisted it out of view, or I’d accidentally press the button that turned the phone off. I missed so many great pictures. But here are some I caught. 

           

We made it to the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument, where I saw one of the best signs I didn’t get a picture of:

“I’m allergic to misogyny. It makes me break out in feminist rants.” 

And then we dispersed. It was around 3:30. We eventually met up with my nephew Geoff, who’d flown in from California for the march; hung out in the Martin Luther King branch of the D.C. Public Library until it closed; and went in search of dinner. Along with hundreds of thousands of marchers.

            After giving up on one place that had an hour and a half wait – we were seven people by now – and waiting an hour at another place, eating in D.C. was impossible. And we needed to drive back to New York that night. So we went back to Shady Grove to pick up Rachael’s car, and ate a late dinner (9 p.m.) at Paladar, which I recommend if you happen to be in Gaithersburg, Md., and want killer short ribs.

            On the road back to New York at 10:30, we drove through moderate fog most of the way -- was this an omen of days to come? We dropped off Christie in Brooklyn and made our way to upper Manhattan. The fog faded on the West Side Highway around 34th Street, but emerged again at 79th Street.
#52essays2017

Essay #3: Fear of fear of fear...

            I got lunch at the Great Northern Food Hall at Grand Central today. After buying a curried herring on rye smorebrod, I wandered around looking for a place to sit. A whole section of tables had been cut off “for a charity event” and all the seats on the north side of the food area were taken. On the opposite side, I saw a l ong banquette that was empty, so I sat down, took off hat and scarf, put backpack and purse on the floor, and took a bite from my sandwich (which was delicious, BTW).

            A young woman in uniform came over to inform me that this seatting was only for full-service customers, and I would have to move. Well, where was I supposed to move to? There were no free seats. She was polite but insistent that I had to move. I refused. If you find me a seat, I’ll move, I said. She stared at me, clearly angry, and repeated that I had to move. I said, I can’t move if there’s no place to move to. She strode away, and I wondered if she was going to call security.

            I felt like a cranky old lady. I wondered if there would be a scene. I wondered if I would be arrested. I was a bit frightened, but also a tiny bit exhilarated.

            The young woman returned to say she’d found me a seat. Fine. I picked up all my stuff and followed her to a row of high stools at a bar, which I had thought was only for people ordering at that food station. I thanked the young woman and finished the excellent smorebrod.

            Was I so daring today because of what I started writing for this essay yesterday? By  writing about fear, Girl Griot had sparked the following.

            Fear is one of the topics on my essay list. I too suffer from fear and probably have most of my life. I was going to start with the poem "A Chant Against Fear" by Jamaican poet Tanya Shirley. “A Chant Against Fear” lists 32 of Shirley’s fears. Here is a small list of mine.

Fear of new schools.

Fear of calling someone in school by the wrong name.

Fear of pronouncing words wrong (my mother's sister is my ant in Brooklyn, my aunt in Connecticut, my ant in Pennsylvania).

Fear of being stupid, and fear of being too smart.

Fear of riding a bike.

Fear of the horses I love in the fields across the road.

Fear of never having a boyfriend.

Fear of what would happen if I had a boyfriend.

Fear that no one would ever ask me to marry him.

Fear that I would marry the wrong person.

Fear of becoming a mother.

Fear of never having a child.

Fear of making the wrong decisions.

Fear of speaking up in public.

Fear of swimming.

Fear of being a woman alone.

            Just as Girl Griot relates, I too have been called “brave” for writing about my personal life and feelings, and reading that writing aloud to strangers. I didn’t feel brave. Yes, I was nervous about reading aloud. Would my stories connect to anyone else? Was I the only one who felt this way?

            In elementary school I’d be afraid to raise my hand when the teacher asked a question because I’d have to speak aloud, even from my seat. But I was more afraid of the teacher thinking I didn’t know the answer, so I’d  sometimes dare to raise my hand. In high school I was afraid of going to the Friday night dance party at school, but I went anyway. Maybe this time someone would ask me to dance, but that rarely happened, and no one asked me twice. I was overcoming one fear and encountering another.

            In college speech was a required class. I was afraid to stand in front of a class of 10 and give a talk on a subject of my choosing. If I looked at my notes and didn’t look at the faces staring up at me, I could manage it. Almost twenty years later I was standing in front of a class of 18 undergraduates as a professor, terrified of whether I could teach, but by now confident that I knew what I was talking about.

            When I hit 50, it felt like several layers of fear were sloughed off. For a while, at least, I ceased worrying about what other people thought of me. How did this happen? I don’t really know. Perhaps I’d learned that those people whose opinions I worried about were just as worried themselves. Were we all in a feedback loop of fear?

            As I’ve gotten older yet, fears of aging have crept in. Fear of losing my memory. Fear of dementia (which neither of my parents had, and they lived into their 90s). Fear of infirmity. Fear of losing friends to death, as I’ve already lost Jack, my husband. Fear of illness as I live alone. Fear of dying. All quite normal fears, I suppose.

            I think I’ve lost my fear of speaking personally in public because I now feel I have to speak up. How else can I connect to others if not by raising my voice. And listening to others as well. And reading their words, as I hope they will read mine.
             And did I lose my fear of confrontation because my leg hurts when I stand for more than a couple of minutes? I had to sit down, no matter what. And I didn't have to justify to Jack whatever bad consequences occurred. I was on my own. I am on my own. For a few minutes at least, I was not afraid to be a woman alone.
 #52essays2017

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In 2017, I'm trying to write an essay a week. You can join in. 

Check out Vanessa Mártir’s blog to find out how!

SOL Tuesday: Planning

Last night and this morning, I promised myself I would make a plan and stick to it, not fritter the time away reading the newspaper and Facebook. The plan: get up, do the laundry, go to the gym, and see the movie “Neruda,” the subject for my next movie discussion group. But of course, it wasn’t that easy.

            I did get up and took the laundry to the laundromat in the basement of my apartment building before eating breakfast. While everything was in the washers, I went back to my apartment and had breakfast, reading the paper until the clothes had to go into the dryer.

            After bringing the dry laundry back home, I remembered that I also needed to make a phone call, to the management company for the co-op I live in, to get more details about removing my dead husband’s name from our shares in the co-op and adding my daughter’s name. (I’d meant to do that while the clothes were in the dryer, but forgetting that was the first false step.)

            I dialed the number on my cellphone, and waited for the phone to begin to ring. And waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing. That’s strange, I thought. I dialed again – still nothing. I dialed my own number – still nothing. Panic.

            My first thought was, here I’ve got my day planned out, and now my phone doesn’t work, and I’ve got to spend time I don’t have trying to find out what’s wrong. I almost fell apart. I tried texting to see if that worked, and it did. Tried the phone again, and still no success. More panic.

            Then I remembered the time-honored tech fix, known in our house as “plug and unplug.” Actually, it’s turn the power off, let it rest a few minutes, turn the power back on. So I powered off the phone, folded up and put away all the clean laundry, and came back to the phone. Power on. Dial. Success.

            By the time the call was completed, it was time for lunch. After lunch, there was time for the gym or the movie, but not both. Having missed the gym for a couple of weeks, I did the virtuous thing, and went to the gym.

            The real lesson to remember: power off—rest—power on.

Week 2 Essay: Masculinity in "Manchester by the Sea" and "Moonlight"

Last week I saw Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight back to back, and I was struck by the similarities. While the protagonists could hardly be more different -- white working-class Lee in Massachusetts; poor African-American Chiron growing up in Miami -- to me they both seemed afflicted by masculinity.
            Lee is certainly haunted by his own truly careless action that led to the death of his three children and loss of his marriage. But even six or so years later he's unable to forgive himself and cannot allow anyone else to forgive him. Men take responsibility, and if taking responsibility means cutting himself off from all social contact, that's what Lee will do to remain a man. The only social contact he allows himself is to get into meaningless fights after getting drunk in bars. When his brother dies and leaves him the guardian for the brother's 16-year-old son, Lee finds this unthinkable; he's already proven himself incapable of caring for a child, and a man never makes the same mistake twice. Lee barely talks, perhaps taking “the strong silent type” as model and punishment.

            Chiron is silenced almost from the start with no model of masculinity. His father is nowhere in sight, and he’s different enough that even as a child other boys know he can be bullied and chased at will. In his childhood, one man helps him, a drug kingpin; once he’s befriended Chiron he refuses to sell drugs to his single, drug-addicted mother, but Chiron feels the contradiction almost viscerally. The only way he can have a friend is to engage in fake fights, with their homoerotic overtone. As a teenager, he’s taunted for his gayness, for not being a man like the other boys. In the most tender yet tense scene Kevin, his childhood friend, and he make love on the beach. But for Kevin to continue to enact straight manliness, he’s forced by the school bully into taunting Chiron into a fight. After being beaten savagely by classmates, Chiron’s revenge is an assault against the bully that lands him in prison. As a grownup 10 years later, Chiron has learned to survive by becoming a drug dealer, just as his mother has finally gotten straight (has she also been in prison?). His masculinity is less brutal, and he controls his drug sellers through mind games. But he is still suppressing his sexuality and thus any close emotional relationship, as being openly homosexual can only hurt him in his survival mode of drug dealer.

            Of course there are many ways the two men are different. As a gay black child and man, Chiron’s entire life is circumscribed by race, sexuality, and class. A.O. Scott’s review of Manchester by the Sea has a very interesting take on the movie’s racial subtext. But both address the question of what it takes to be a man, whether straight or gay. Lee and Chiron appear to me to be struggling with what they’ve learned masculinity means.            

            EDITED: This is just one small angle on these two movies, which have many nuances, especially Moonlight, that I’m not addressing. So please take it for what it is, and not what it isn’t.

SOL Tuesday: Cosmic Coincidences

This is a day late, but I don’t want to wait until next Tuesday for this story.

            I usually do the crossword puzzle in the New York Times on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday it gets harder, also on Friday, and Saturday you have to think like Will Shortz, puzzle editor, to have even a chance.

            So last Thursday, January 5, I was doing unusually well, I thought, even figuring out some answers by the letters that appeared in crossing words without having the foggiest idea how “?they related to the clues. “Versatile worker” was “of all trades”? “Putdown of an ignorant person” was “you don’t know”? I had the answers, but I didn’t know why.

            A few days later a friend called to say she wondered if whoever made the puzzle had known Jack or that January 5 was the first anniversary of his death – obviously, those puzzle answers made sense because they were “missing Jack.”

            Indeed. The puzzle creator’s name was unknown to me, but I didn’t know everyone Jack had known. So Monday I wrote a letter to the Times, laying out the facts, and asking whether the creator knew Jack or was this a cosmic coincidence?

            On Tuesday I had an e-mail from the puzzle maker. No, he did not know Jack, and the puzzles are created months in advance. But he had his own “cosmic coincidence” to relate. His father had died just about a year ago, at home, and the puzzle maker found a bird’s feather on the floor by his father’s bed, with no idea how it got there. He picked it up and put it on his father’s coffin at the cemetery. About a week later, he found a nearly identical feather at his own home.

Video of Jack's Memorial

Jack Robbins's memorial is finally up on YouTube, a year to the day after he died. It's in seven sections, so you don't have to watch it all in one sitting -- one hour total. Here are the links, and who's speaking in each part.

Scheduled speakers
Part 1: Me and Christie.

Part 2: Both Jack's brother Jim, and his oldest friend, Martin Limbird, were unable to be in New York for the memorial, but they sent remarks read by Mark Jaffe (my brother) and Richard Haas (Christie's partner), respectively.

Speakers from among Jack's friends
Part 3: Mark Jaffe, Richard Haas, and Anne Newman. Anne is married to a college friend of Richard's and happened to work at Business Week with Jack before Jack met Richard.

Part 4: Cheryl Morrison and Clyde Haberman.

Part 5: Ciro Scotti, Prudence Crowther, Debbie Stead, and Hardy Green, Jack's Business Week colleagues.

Part 6: Erla Hutchinson Alexander and Sylvia Law. Erla was a friend from his college days at Wichita State University, and Sylvia was among our oldest friends, a classmate of mine from Antioch College.

Part 7: Cary Lacheen and Michael Coffey. Cary was one of Sylvia's students at NYU Law School and a movie fan to match Jack's passion. And Michael, my former boss at Publishers Weekly, had the most appropriate last word.

2016 Deaths

I thought I posted this last week, but just found it in the Drafts folder.
    Jack died early this year, along with Muhammed Ali, Natalie Cole, Leonard Cohen (one of Jack's favorite singers), David Bowie, Prince, Janet Reno, Antonin Scalia, Abbas Kiarostami (whose movies Jack found enigmatic but worth watching), Gwen Ifill, Carrie Fisher (Jack loved her "Postcards from the Edge"), Debbie Reynolds, Tom Hayden, and Monte Irvin.
   Also Alan Rickman, Glenn Frey of the Eagles (one of Jack's favorite bands), Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire, Harper Lee (another drinker), country singer Sonny James (Jack really liked country music), Keith Emerson and Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Frank Sinatra Jr., Phife Dawg aka Malik Taylor, Patty Duke (yet another drinker), Merle Haggard, Afeni Shakur (I think Jack covered the Panther 21 trial), Michael Cimino (Jack thought he was among the handful of people who actually saw "Heaven's Gate" in a theater), Gene Wilder, Edward Albee, Jose Fernandez, Arnold Palmer (but Jack hated golf), Fidel. Only Ali was Jack's age.
   The scythe has swept through heavily.

SOLTuesday: Bureaucracy

I should have all my dealings with bureaucracy on Tuesdays. It will always give me a Slice of Life story to tell.

            One of my husband’s retirement benefits was a flexible spending account that reimbursed him for his Medicare Part D premium. He had never made a claim because he hated filling out forms, but in 2015, he decided, with my help, to find out the procedure. Then he went into the hospital. Then he died. A couple of months after that, he got a letter reminding him that he had until the end of May to make a claim for 2015. Okay, I thought, I’ll do it.

            I called the phone number on the letter, got sent a claim form, called to make sure I was filling it out correctly and also to make clear to the woman I was speaking to that this claim was for my dead husband, so please don’t make out the check to him.

            Of course, a few weeks later comes a check made out to Jack Robbins.

            Again, I called, and at this point I learned that Jack’s flexible spending account was administered by “a third party,” not the benefits office of the company where he had actually worked. And while I had notified that company (let’s call it Company A) that he had died, that information had never been sent on to the “third party” (let’s call it Company B). I was then put on hold while a benefits person at Company A got in touch with a benefits person at Company B, and, I thought, conveyed the proper  information to Company B.

            I then went back to Company B, where I was told that not only would they send me a check for that premium reimbursement as soon as the computers had all the right information, but that I was also entitled to that same survivor’s benefit. How would I get that, I asked? We’ll send you the information to set that up, I was told.

            This was all six months ago. I waited for the information to come; it never did. Life intervened, and this all went to the back of my mind. But the new year reminded me that this was a very loose string. So I called Company B today.

            The woman I spoke with was very helpful, and even offered to direct deposit the reimbursement so I wouldn’t have to wait for a check. But in looking up how to set up an account for me, she saw that the computer still showed an active account for Jack. Could it be that Company A’s computer had never properly sent the information that Jack is dead to Company B’s computer? Jenna, Company B’s representative, said she would look into it and call me back within two days. Maybe I will have a Slice of Life Thursday. 

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own. 

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Yet another writing challenge. There are no rules for this one about what constitutes an essay, so in case I don't get another more traditional-looking essay written this week, this will do.

SOLS Tuesday: Stupidity, and Lessons Learned, in Cuba

Here is a slice from a week ago that I couldn’t post because Cuba’s access to the Internet is so unreliable.

            My daughter and I were on the second day of our people-to-people tour in Cuba. “People-to-people” means the tour group is out from 9 to at least 5 every day, with guides, walking tours, educational talks, and generally a surfeit of information.

            Tuesday morning an architect met our group of 26 in the Plaza de Armas, in Havana, where in 1519 monks celebrated the first mass on the island under a huge tree. A church was built there some years later. We then walked through a little park and past a statue of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, who declared independence from Spain in 1868, which didn’t finally come until 1898. As we then approached an imposing building, which the architect explained had originally been a governor’s palace and now city offices, I saw a man selling maps. A map enthusiast, I hadn’t been able to get one before.

           I stopped and asked how much. Three CUCs (the Cuban convertible peso used by tourists), he said. I’d been carrying my smartphone, for taking photos, a notebook and pen, for taking notes, and our group’s itinerary, and put all of these down on a nearby empty table. Took out my wallet, paid for the map, and picked up all my stuff to join the group.

            You’ve already guessed what happened. A few minutes later I reached for my phone to take a photo of the decorative columns on the front of the governor’s palace – and it wasn’t in my pocket. It wasn’t with my notebook. It was gone.

            I went back to the table where I’d put everything down, and it was now covered with tourist magazines and brochures. No phone in sight. “I’ve lost my phone,” I said loudly, now searching through my pockets again, and in my purse. No luck. Our tour director had me empty everything out of my purse and my backpack. No phone. The local tour guide asked the woman if she had a seen a phone, but of course she hadn’t.

            In my panic, I couldn’t even remember what the map seller looked like, and felt doubly embarrassed, first for being so careless, second for being such a “typical American tourist” and not even noticing the local vender I was buying from.

            For the next 20 minutes, I beat myself up: how could I be so stupid? how could I be so careless? how could I not notice what I was doing, or who I was buying the map from? But basic optimism came to my rescue. I’d traded my phone for a city and country map that I really wanted. The phone was replaceable. Fortunately, it was only a few months old, so there wasn’t much on it, and I can afford the replacement. The pictures of Havana’s famous classic cars were lost, but I was able to get more shots of those in our remaining time in Havana.

            As for Cuba, it is well worth the trip. If you can manage to go, I strongly recommend you do it. Go Ahead Tours would be an excellent way to start.

SOLTuesday: Forty-six Years Ago Today

Forty-six years ago today, Jack and I moved into our current apartment. It was our third move in New York, and our first where we hired professional movers -- after all, we were 28, time to start acting like grownups. Of course, that was the day the city decided to do some repairs on the pavement of our block; I think the movers were able to park in front of our corner building on 85th Street and Columbus, but then had to back out.
   We were nervous about entrusting our sacred stereo system to unknown movers, so we took the turntable to the new apartment ourselves a couple of days earlier -- and were shocked to find it missing when we arrived on moving day. Complaints to the super were fruitless. Clearly, someone in the building had stolen it. He was also supposed to give us our copy of the lease, which he never did. (Which turned out to be moot when the building went co-op 12 years later, but I was nervous about it for years before the co-op process.) I learned only recently that super was hated by everyone in the building as incompetent, and he was gone a few years after we moved in.
   Our new apartment felt so spacious compared to the one we were leaving. There were two, 2(!) bedrooms, each one big enough for a bed and more than one bureau. There was a long, long hallway, perfect for lining with the bookcases I hadn't bought yet. The kitchen had full-size appliances and was big enough for a real table -- our previous apartment's kitchen was as wide as the narrow stove at one end, the sink's drainboard was a piece of wood nailed to the wall, and there was no, zero, zilch counter space. Wheee!
   Now that we have been here for quite a while, and redone the kitchen, I can see more places for improvement, like a second bathroom, which was more necessary when there were two of us here, and getting elderly. But I love the view out of the front door of the building: Riverside Park to the left, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine two blocks away to the right. Moving is such an ordeal, and I don't intend to do it ever again.

SOLTuesday: One Year Ago Today

Just about a year ago began what we did not yet know was the beginning of the end for my husband. A year ago probably yesterday, Jack noticed a blister on that leg that he thought was more swollen than it had been. A year ago today the blister was larger and had an odd red line at its base. We thought perhaps some particle had gotten inside his compression stockings and scratched him.

            A year ago today, more blisters appeared and began to ooze clear liquid. A year ago tomorrow, we went to a City MD office, since his doctor was on vacation, and Jack didn’t like the backup doctor. The City MD doctor thought these oozing blisters might be a bullus impetigo and suggested a dermatologist. She also covered the blisters with gauze and wrapped the leg with an Ace bandage; I had improvised with gauze pads we happened to have and tape.

            A year ago the next day we were at Roosevelt Hospital’s medical offices; first a long wait in the waiting room, then one after the other a nurse, resident, and finally the dermatologist, all asking the same questions. No bullus impetigo, the dermatologist assured, but he wanted Jack to see his primary doctor. He advised an antibiotic to prevent possible infection and that Jack keep his legs elevated, even putting a pillow under the mattress to keep them up at night.

            We took a taxi home. Our driver was both a Mets fan (remember, the Mets were in the playoffs a year ago) and a reader of the Drudge Report, which somehow seemed a strange combination to me. He was very talkative, first telling us about a farm on the rooftop of the original Ansonia, a Beaux-Arts apartment building (see pictures), soon closed down by the City Health Department. He also wanted us know about a Russian scientist’s article on the Drudge Report reporting how the U.S. would implode at the next crisis because (1) supermarkets had only about a week’s worth of food in stock and (2) drug addicts would become like zombies when they couldn’t get their doses.

            We were taking a lot of taxis in those days, and New York taxi drivers can still be as entertaining as their stereotypes.

SOL Tuesday: Street Scene

I live on a quiet residential side street in upper Manhattan. Out of the window I might see a person walking up the hill or down, the occasional car, sometimes a truck. But not much to make it worthwhile to sit on the window ledge and look out.

            Today, I noticed an orange locksmith’s car, with“Locksmith,” two phone numbers, and a Staten Island address painted prominently, stopped in the middle of the street. What attracted my attention was that both the hood and the trunk were open. Was the locksmith having engine trouble?

            I then noticed a young man talking to a woman in the driver’s seat of a gray SUV with New York plates parked along the curb in front of the locksmith’s car. She got out of the car and ran up the middle of the street – another odd occurrence.

            The young man came over to the locksmith’s car, took out a water bottle, drank, then poured water into something in the engine, the radiator? (I’ve never owned a car, so the internal parts of the engine are a mystery.) He went back to the car, got a larger bottle of water, did the same procedure. He stared at the engine for a while, then went back to the trunk and took out the tools for fixing a flat. (I do know those.)

            There was no visible, to me, flat on his car or the SUV, but he walked around to the curb side of the SUV, so that must be it. Eventually, he rolled the flat out in front of the SUV, and it looked so misshapen, I wondered if the tire had been flat for a long time. He got the replacement tire from the back of the SUV and rolled it around to the curb side.

            A sedan with New Jersey plates pulled up behind the locksmith’s car, and the woman who’d run up the street came out. She (maybe in her late 40s?) and the young man talked for a while, then he got a pad from his car and, leaning on the hood of his car, which he had closed, he wrote out what was no doubt an invoice. She went back to the sedan, where I could see an elderly man in the passenger seat and a “handicapped” sign hanging from the rear-view mirror. She returned, gave the locksmith cash, he reminded her to take a receipt. He had already put the flat tire into the back of the SUV, and then she took two tote bags, a small cardboard box, and a stroller that had been on the street and put them into the back of the SUV.  Then she went back to the sedan and got into the driver’s seat and appeared to put the receipt into a folder that she then placed on the dashboard. After a few minutes, she drove away in the sedan.

            The locksmith was now back in his car, got out to retrieve his cellphone which he’d left on the hood, and returned to his car. And sat there for more than five minutes before he too drove off.

            So what was happening here? Why did she leave all those bags in the SUV? Why did she run up the street in one direction and return in different car from another direction? I imagined the elderly man was her father, the sedan was his vehicle, and she was picking him up from his apartment to take him, where? to her home in New Jersey? to a new residence for elderly people? This whole scene could be its own writing prompt for another day.

SOL Tuesday: Grief Art

I should have posted this a week ago, but the experience was too overwhelming to assimilate quickly. Here’s what happened.

Taryn Simon, a multimedia artist, created an installation and performance piece titled “An Occupation of Loss,” about, partly, the ways grief is expressed in several cultures. The installation consists of 11 massive hollow concrete columns in a semicircle, with low ramps leading up to each one, with low entrances. They are in a very large room, dimly lighted. The performance is of professional mourners from 17 countries, including Ghana, Burkina Faso, Bhutan, Cambodia, Colombia, Greece, enacting their rituals of grief.

Both the installation and the performance are interactive. In the installation, viewable in the afternoon, viewers can walk into the columns, make sounds if they want, just sit if they want. With the performance, in the evening, viewers watch from a balcony while the mourners walk slowly around the columns, and then into the columns in groups of one, two, or three. After one mourner plays a high-pitched percussion instrument, viewers walk down to the columns, and then we could walk around the mourners, listen at the entrances, or even walk into the columns to experience the ritual closeup.

Some of the performances are purely instrumental, some are lamentations, some combine laments and music.

I found the experience emotionally overpowering and also comforting. The hollow columns felt like a structure that should be available for mourners in public places, perhaps like “churches” for atheists. As participants in the performance, we only had 35 minutes, and I could have spent at least 10 minutes in each of the 11 columns – going to each one for only a couple of minutes felt almost like window-shopping. I also wish the entire work had been available for more than 10 days.

SOL Tuesday: A Blast of Memories

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Putting away my new carry-on suitcase after my trip to Paris, I decided it was time to get rid of the small purple wheelie with the handle too short to be comfortable. As I pulled it out of the closet, I noticed there was stuff in it. The “stuff” turned out to be relics of my mother’s, her sister’s, and my sister’s after they died.

     There’s a Google map to Stratford, Connecticut, where several of the family stayed when we went to my sister’s memorial in Westport. Stratford was close to her home, and family and friends gathered there afterwards. There’s a printout of two kinds of meditation, with the hand and with light; my sister became an interfaith minister late in life and loved meditation. I must have thought I might try these, though I am not much of a meditation-person. There’s a letter my mother wrote to me in 1981, about a book of China photos, a Russell Baker column annoyed about the New York Times style book accepting pinyin spelling (stemming from my mother’s Sinophilia), and a hint to my parents’ divorce two years later, only clear to me now. There’s the program for my aunt’s memorial, as well as cards from her friends to my mother, along with two notes my aunt, who lived in Vermont, had written to my mother, revealing her interests in ballet (she’d seen Giselle in Montreal), cooking (she’d taken a class in low-cal French cookery at the nearby New England Culinary Institute), movies (she’d seen Babette’s Feast), and politics (it was right after the 1988 presidential primary).

     There’s a copy of my aunt’s will, now almost 20 years old. I know why my mother would have kept it (she kept almost everything), but why did I? Did I want her list of charitable bequests?

     There’s a journal my sister started two years after her third breast cancer diagnosis, which she titled “Morning Pages”; she kept it for five days. I know now that she had two more years, but she didn’t know. She writes about her bodily feelings, but also her spirit as different from her body, prayer, positive thinking, visualization – all areas I feel little connection with, but find interesting to read. I think I’ll see if her older daughter wants the notebook.

     Lots of photographs, family and otherwise. some I have, but others are of people I don’t know and don’t know why I took them. A clipping from the Miami News, December 19, 1975, is about my mother's talk at a local YWCA about her recent trip to China, one of the early visits organized by the U.S.-China People’s Friendship Association.

      Finally, the stash included recipes, two from my aunt, her Vermont baked beans and a Spicy Rice & Nuts from Montpelier’s Hunger Mountain Co-op. I can barely deciper my aunt’s handwriting for the baked beans, but the Spicy Rice & Nuts looks like something I will try out for my vegetarian days. There are also two recipes in my handwriting that I must have sent to my mother, one for Ghivetch, a Balkan vegetable stew, which I remember making, and another for poached bass with sweet peppers. I made this dish for dinner tonight, though I had to use cod since no striped bass was available. It was delicious. 

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and read their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.

SOL Tuesday: Grief Insight

Last weekend I had several insights, but this is the most interesting so far.

            I’ve noticed how I’ve wanted to have the radio and often the TV as well on whenever I am in the apartment. I was not always like this. At first I thought it was just to replace Jack’s voice, which wasn’t constant, of course, but was available.

            The other day, with both the radio and a fan on, the fan almost drowning out the radio, I remembered as though connected by an umbilical cord to the fall of 1961. I  was 19, on a job with my college in Los Angeles, as far as I’d been away from anything or anyone I knew in my life. I had just moved into a rooming house, brought groceries home after my job, and I had no radio. I had never been so alone. The silence of the room terrified me, and I cried for maybe half an hour. I ended up going home,  a decision I always regretted.

            After that, I never lived alone again, except for a couple of weeks between a roommate and moving into a commune. And then I got married.

            My 74-year-old self is still connected to that 19-year-old self afraid of the silence. I’m trying to get used to silence now. Listen to music or talk, or baseball, if there’s something to listen to, but not just to fill up the silence.

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SOLTuesday: Why I Love Copyediting

I’m still free-lance copyediting on occasion. The magazine I was working for today gave me a collection of fiction reviews to copyedit. And sure enough, there was a historical novel whose reviewer was a bit hazy on historical fact.

            The reviewer says the novel is set in “Nazi and Fascist-occupied Venice, Italy, in 1945, just weeks before Italy’s surrender to the Allies.” Well, Italy surrendered to the Allies in 1943, so is this novel set in 1943 or 1945? After the Fascist Italian government surrendered, Nazi Germany invaded, and there might well have also been Italian Fascists in Nazi-occupied Venice, but I don't think one could say the Fascists were "occupying" an Italian city. And if it’s set in I945, then it’s just weeks before Germany’s surrender.

            A little fact-checking shows the book is set in 1945, so I know how to correct the review. And I feel like I have earned my pay for the day.

SOL Tuesday: Donating (a delicate subject)

I came to the Bronx today to donate the unused catheters left over from two years ago, after Jack came home from rehab. (If you don’t care for potty talk, you can skip this one.)

            The rehab place had left his Foley catheter in place; apparently, they didn’t know how to teach an old person to catheterize himself. Jack hated needing me to help him in dealing with the Foley, which was also not a very easy process. So Jack went to a urologist, who showed him how to do it himself; we bought a box of catheters, Jack had the Foley removed, and after a couple of weeks, he was back to normal with his “toileting.”

            Jack would have thrown away the half a box remaining, but I can’t do that. Why not call the urologist and see whether I could give him the leftovers, which he could give to a patient, since these things are expensive. But after Jack died, I learned that the urologist was no longer at Roosevelt (now Mt. Sinai West) Hospital. (Like Jack’s cardiologists and hand doctor, there’s been an exodus of doctors from Roosevelt.)

            Finally I found the urologist online at his new hospital, in the Bronx. Yes, I could bring the catheters to his office. But by public transportation it took about an hour and a half to get there. The  Google map was not that helpful, either; this hospital is much more accessible by car than walking (from the bus), few sidewalks, obstacles Google doesn’t know about.

            However, mission accomplished in five minutes. And I love coming to neighborhoods in this city I have never been to. This one (Morris Park) has two- and three-story buildings with ground-floor storefronts and apartments above. Shops with Spanish and a few Arabic signs; a West Indian restaurant; phone stores; discount stores. And the elevated “subway” follows for a short distance the Boston Road, aka the Boston Post Road, aka the King’s Highway, aka Route 1 (which has run from Boston to New York since the 17th century).