Winter Options

On the frigid Friday when we're boycotting everything... striking, protesting... I went out, and New York City somehow always seems to be business-as-usual.  While I remember distinctly the sense of empowerment I felt demonstrating as a teenager in the 60's-- like part of an army of compassionate humanity, today I feel snubbed and overlooked.  Even the weather is daunting. Victims of the cold here receiving little sympathy; they are anonymous and powerless. The wounded martyrs of ICE demonstrations are filling news platforms, and yet the bodies here-- mostly homeless, some nameless... have suffered from another kind of ice... and their narratives maybe quietly heroic. Two men I discovered Tuesday in a doorway-- one a migrant terrified to check into a shelter or warming center. Hours later, shivering in my apartment, I fretted about these men; they were not young. Reluctantly I called 311 and they promised no names would be asked.  But promises in this country in 2026 seem to be threadbare things.

Most of my friends are staying inside in this polar vortex; for those with draughty old apartments and insufficient heat, sometimes a reality check outside in the form of a brisk walk kickstarts our internal thermostat. But I find many of the shut-ins more nostalgic than ever-- binging on the 'Manhattan before 1990' sites and vintage city photos.  For the second time last night I watched I Am Twenty-- an extraordinarily poignant Russian film from 1964 with a story behind it.  But the art museum scene-- the poetry, the conversations-- brought me into the usual nostalgia and longing for a time when these deep discussions among friends were daily occurrences.  Also-- the old version of Moscow is on display and fantastically interesting.  

I am no longer sure who anyone is, in this time when even my friends have enhanced their face, have altered their lives to depend on mobile phone platforms and award-show culture.  I also watched-- again,  the Louis Malle 'Place de la République' in which he interviews regular blue-collar type people on the streets of Paris.  This is the version I recall from my first trip there in the early 1970's... and somehow each person he questions seems to have a very candid answer.  The fact that they are 'who they are' seems now a treasured state of being.  A certain intimacy radiates from just the stark honesty with which they face a microphone and camera.  It is disturbing that I don't feel this connection in casual conversation today-- in interviews and televised dialogues.  The obvious make-up and hair aside, everything seems scripted and manipulated-- calculated, prepared, and 'filtered'. 

Several of my neighbors have gone on small holidays and returned tanned and unprepared for this unusual cold spell.  They have also avoided disturbing politics and daily discouraging takeaways on the diminished value of democracy in America.  But these people have money-- they have options.  There is no option for the two men trying to sleep in the Lexington Avenue door-niche Tuesday night. 

When I was a teenager, my Aunt Rita had a little shop.  They sold John Meyer of Norwich clothing-- sort of preppy but decent quality wear for suburban men and women.  Casual clothing-- practical things.  Of course all these brands have been reinvented in the digital age, but back then I was something of a hippie, and... well, the clothes were not for me.  I did make wool curtains for the store fitting rooms and then made myself a warm winter skirt from the extra.  I sat on a vintage stool at a counter after school and folded things, hand-wrote tickets and promotional postcards.  I loved it there. In January, they had a shipment of what they called Cruise-wear-- suddenly summer clothing-- bathing suits and cover-ups, T-shirts and khaki shorts.. golf-wear.  My aunt had to explain this to me... it was a thing.. and I suppose even the concurrent shop window display gave people a break, a sense of hope in midwinter 1960's when snow was plentiful and the cold was consistent and predictable.

The saleswomen were all friends of my aunt-- one especially remains in my heart-- a tall, elegant Jackie Kennedy type with a lovely speaking voice and innate elegance.  We became sort of intimate. Her husband, I remember, was this tall photographer.  He was so handsome-- and a little rough.  He both adored her and had that macho edge one puts on because in his heart he knew he'd married 'up'.  I saw him with other women in the city.  This was common then; no one spoke of it.  Later she suffered from breast cancer... and he left her.  When the shop closed, we lost touch and I went away to college. In the end I heard she'd remarried to a man who spoiled her-- took her on exotic voyages before her premature death.  I am surely older than she would have been. Today I miss her-- her patient explanation of 'cruisewear' to a girl whose small world did not encompass weather-driven vacation choices. She touched my life in such a gentle way and I hope she is warm.

I miss these people who knew exactly who they were; the people of the Place de la République are here among us somewhere in the city-- delivering things, slicing meat in a bodega... making pizza maybe... but they are rare.  My aging friends are a little fearful and insecure... they begin to walk with hesitancy and they mistrust, with good reason, the institutions which were designed to protect us. Everything is inappropriately invasive and these people who seem to live in old photos and memoirs-- well, they call me, narrating their disappointments-- maybe looking for sympathy, not always aware of this.  

Perhaps I am guilty, too. In this culture where one does not 'see' oneself, I am surely afflicted.  To protect from the diagnosis, I avoid mirrors, avoid too much effort to change my appearance.  Inside I am pretty much the same, although I miss the alacrity and candor with which I once greeted people and embraced their intimacy.  I'm a little guarded and not sure these 'others' know themselves.  They think they do, but not in the way these French working people on the street knew exactly where they were going and why. 

We do change.  My son has changed me profoundly.  I am now a football fan-- a sports fan.  One osmotically absorbs the passions of one's loved ones.  And he will not know that I switch off the pro-bowl game to catch a rare cameo of Tarkovsky who has sadly left this world... or Yevtushenko, reading his poetry in 1962 Moscow... to screen-- one more time-- the world as it was when I was barely ten years old,  when I Am Twenty would have been beyond my understanding and certainly not something my parents would have taken me to see.  Fortunately, like most things of the heart, one does not have to exchange one thing to allow for another. Unlike the two men on Lexington, we have options-- maybe not economic but emotional and intellectual ones.  May we put them to better use.  

Where There is a Will….

The passage of relative time is a perpetual surprise for me; the pool of my past is filling so quickly with years… I can remember well when it was near-empty and the sense of  'brink' was like a permanent slow companion.  Looking at images from yesterday's women's march I remembered how I lived around the corner from Jackie Kennedy in her young widowhood.  She came in and out like a movie star, was civil but not very friendly to neighbors.  Still, despite her aura and the unequivocal celebrity status that seemed somehow to protect her, she was visible and often took taxis like anyone else.  She'd occasionally sit by the Central Park zoo with her children or a friend; people seemed to respect her privacy, from sanitation workers to other socialites.  After all, she was part of maybe the most important American story of her era… and she'd moved on-- she'd stepped outside the drama and assumed life as a regular woman.  She had children-- she had a job.

My mom was close to her age, and like all American women of that generation, she was influenced by her style: the hair, the hats and sunglasses-- her tall, understated elegance.   But what so many of them had in common was this silent acceptance of their husband's infidelities.  My own father's were not as flagrant or exciting; they were not even always centered on other women.  But there was a sort of pact these women kept-- a tolerance for behaviors that undermined and insulted their dignity in some way… and yet they carried on. They had their hair done, their nails manicured,  they met friends for lunch and took taxis to meetings.  They volunteered at schools-- they played bridge and shopped.  But they exchanged few complaints about their marriages.  They were committed, they were locked in.  My own mother feared being alone and made so many concessions I both disrespected her submissiveness and admired her stoicism.  It was the other version of #metoo:  I'm a wife and mother-- my husband doesn't treat me the way I deserve, but I have a sense of dignity.  #metoo.

In the wake of the current epidemic of accountability and blame, of revelations of abuse, I think about the variations and B-sides of the trend.  My son tells me about men-- athletes he knows, who avoid fun and flirtation because they are so targeted, like starlets, by predatory women who plot to cry monster as soon as they entrap.  It's like a reverse #metoo.  And how about the betrayals-- those of us whose husbands cheated, slept with our friends and sisters-- our beloved life partners… and we left-- we had to leave-- the pain, the humiliation was intolerable?  We were not Jackie O or my mom, but women who needed to save our children from marital tension and reinvent ourselves.  #metoo.

On Jackie O's corner, when I was 20-ish, a beautiful boy used to stand between 5 and 6 every evening. I'd return home and he seemed to stare at me.  I thought maybe he was a stalker, or just waiting for a ride or a bus.  But one day, he left me a note… a love note.  He smiled while I read it… and waved.  I ignored him... but gradually he came closer… he rode the bus with me, did funny tricks and made me laugh.  He had this beautiful long blonde hair and different colored eyes, like a huskie.  It was inevitable that we would consummate this little flirtation… it was passionate and innocent.  Without clothes, he was angelic like a boy-- it went on for weeks, until my boyfriend came back from wherever he'd been… Later I learned he was only 17.  I'd actually committed some kind of violation of a minor-- this romantic little game we'd played out of pursuit and conquest.  I could have been prosecuted in some scenario as a predator.  #metoo.

I grew up a little sister.  I followed, worshipped, loved and occasionally feared my older sister.  She was conniving and manipulative; like all first-borns, she'd been the little princess and then had to share.  I gave her anything she wanted, to win her affection and maintain her trust.  I was loyal and lied for her.  She was often in trouble and I wanted to help.  At a certain point, she turned on me-- maligned and backstabbed and betrayed.  She wanted to regain her territory and I retreated-- moved on.  It's an old story-- either fight it out, tooth and nail, or find another place.  I made friends, created my own family.  I missed my mother-- her stoicism and old-school devotion to the fictional hearth of family.  She missed me, too.  Toward the end of her life, I couldn't stay away, despite the threats of my sister.  My mother read my heart and confided her fears and regrets and sorrows.  Now that she has passed, I have to manage the harsh consequences of my lack of involvement in their legal arrangements.  I am marginalized and passed over-- misunderstood and-- again, betrayed.  It is painful to receive this, and yet I know I must 'eat the document', as they say.  I find I am one of a legion of naive family members who are the victims of competitive siblings and a kind of justice of greed.  I am a sentimental party, and I will lose my right to inherit any thing of beauty to keep my mom close to me-- around my neck or on my dresser.  There are many of us, and we seem to be women without men to assert our rights with a loud, combative voice.  A 'will'… the document is called.  It seems to have none.  A won't.  #metoo.

We've lost children, we've been sick and no one showed up-- we've survived without child support, or any support… #metoo.  We've made mistakes with our children, and we've had no one to share in the joy they have given us…#metoo.  We grieve alone, we are misread, underacknowledged and passed over.  We grow old and have to make difficult choices… we remember the victories, the losses, the insults-- the love and the sex and the confessions and the lies, the satisfactions and the frustrations, the fresh beginnings and the hopelessness of the tide running out.  And yet we are still here-- me, my friends, my work… the legacies which may or may not mean something when we are gone… another kind of will.  I do…#metoo…

For several days I have wept out loud watching excerpts of the US Olympic gymnasts describe the disturbing abuse they endured under the guise of medical treatment.  This is not a new story, but the courtroom testimonials are devastating.  The #metoo movement has revealed that the greater majority of women have been subjected to mistreatment in one form or another.  When it targets our entire life's focus-- our dedication and dreams, our passion and talent-- it is that much more heinous and difficult.  I kept silent when I was attacked and threatened by a producer who had invited me to discuss the music I wrote which he had described as brilliant,  only to find he had another agenda.  It was humiliating and traumatizing, and I carried it in silence; I paid a price, and survived.  But what bothers me in the case of the gymnasts-- they were children.  Were their parents completely unaware? Their perfect proud mothers whose dreams were being realized by the prize-winning performance of offspring-- did they fail to rock the boat, did they disbelieve?  Did their daughters keep quiet because they feared disappointing their parents?  Can children actually be raised to keep these dangerous 'secrets' with their moms?  I know I was.  In the 1960's this would have fallen on deaf ears.  My sister acted out in ways that were beyond disturbing, but no one seemed to want to take her for help.  My own father suffered from paralyzing depressions and manic periods, and no one wanted to speak.  I asked to visit a shrink-- to discuss this-- and my Jackie O-esque mom ignored my plea-- what if it went on my perfect college transcript? For the siblings, friends and parents who fail to blow whistles, who worry about consequences and selfish ambition and fail to observe and protect their children… shame on you... #youtoo.

So while I am now excluded from family money because the truth-- awkward as it might have been--was my blood sibling,  I will always choose not to ally myself with the guilty.  Attached as they were to their agenda, they not only neglected to protect, but punished me.  I forgive my mom; she herself was marginalized and disrespected often, and did not have the courage to do anything but enable.  Here we are, horrified at the testimony of these young athletes… and failing to protect so many children in our midst.  We elected a president who is not only abusive to women but ignorant, bigoted and hateful.  What message is this sending?  My mom reached out to me late in life-- she confessed and apologized, opened her heart.  I will love her and miss her forever.  As for the rest of them.. there is karma, but there is also great injustice in the world; we can only try to leave a legacy of truth and compassion going forward… #metoo... our work has only just begun.

The Snow that Never Drifts

One of my very early childhood memories is the day I nearly drowned.  It was a non-dramatic incident; I was 2 years old, standing in a pool-- at someone's beach club, maybe… my Mom was sitting on the ledge in her sexy black one-piece (she had that Jackie Kennedy vibe back then) with her sunglasses, and her long legs, and her manicure and her cigarette, holding me with the other hand...and I decided I'd lie down on the lovely blue wavy bottom, only to discover that I couldn't quite find the surface.  I could see my Mom, clearly… fanning her hand carelessly through the water--- laughing, joking with her friends in that language I couldn't quite grasp… and I was rolling awkwardly, trying to yell, breathing in water…

Anyway, I guess they fished me out and cleared my lungs, and I was fine… and no one ever spoke of this, that I remember; I was too young to blame, or even to feel sorry for myself, and I grew up with this childhood sense that my mother belonged to some slightly removed womanly 'cult' that I'd never quite infiltrate.  I never pointed a finger at her, or resented her for her failings, or even her politics, until she began to dislike me for mine, and by then I'd left the house.

There are lovely old photos of my Mom in maternity clothes, with a cigarette.  Middle class women didn't nurse babies in those days; they were given diet pills immediately after birth to lose extra weight. We drank milk-- not formula.   Babies in strollers were left in the sun outside the market while mothers shopped.  They nearly always travelled in packs or cliques, and the kids were expected to form alliances and amuse ourselves.  We didn't nag or beg for food or whine.  We wanted them to like us, to give us their attention willingly, to turn their powdered and lipsticked faces on us and smile like magazine mothers.  There was a sort of innocence in this negligence; no one was policing our parents and they were a little carefree and careless.  We walked ourselves to school, we played unsupervised in dangerous dirt piles and woods,  and we grew up.

Something about snow always takes us back to our childhoods, when snow seemed more plentiful, more omnipresent-- cleaner, quieter, less problematic.  Something about the disappointment of the much-hyped Blizzard of 2015 underscored my sense that some innocence has been lost forever.  I had this image of patients in their hospital beds overlooking the city-- feeling comforted that even healthy people would be paralyzed and unable to participate in their own lives-- that the world would stop, beneath a blanket of magical muting white fairy dust-- that every building, squalid or grand, would for a few hours look exactly the same-- -that Porsches and old battered Buicks would all be rounded white mounds on the side of the road.  That everything would be whitewashed and quieted and blessed… and for those of us who have already failed at our New Year's resolutions, well-- we could all have another slate.

Last night I went to sleep with hope and a sense of relief, in a second-chance-Christmas fog.  I'd have a 366th day-- no schedule, no counting, no obligations.  I'd be a shut-in; I could clean my house, or not-- I could turn on the last string of Christmas lights I've yet to put away, and read poems.  But it didn't happen.  It hiccuped and embarrassed and bombed.  People woke up feeling guilty they had overslept.  People felt duped.  We got sort of a tainted snow-day. By afternoon, I could pretty much navigate the streets in sneakers.

My Mom, who is perpetually covered in her own snowdrift of dementia, called to wish me a wonderful summer.  I've begun to save her messages, because they're so unpredictable they actually seem brilliant and philosophical, like that Peter Sellers character from whatever 1970's movie that was.  She leaves her telephone number incessantly, because she has no idea where she is, but worries that I won't find her.  The number has evolved.  It used to be my number, the one she'd called.  Now sometimes it rhymes; sometimes it contains letters, names.  Her television set has become a kind of God in her bedroom.  The Bloomberg commentators are her neighbors; the commercials provide the weather, her music, animal visitors, friends.. .a narrative of non-sequiturs that populate her life.  Sometimes she consults the TV for her own telephone number.  It can mirror the price of gold, the Nasdaq, or, last night, she carefully spelled out 'Celebrity Apprentice' on my voicemail, after the area code.  'Words', she said.  You know, it's 'words'.  'Call me back if you can,' she says, and then 'Call me back if you can't'.  

I can't help thinking in some way she is apologizing for all the childhood milestones she glossed over, or downplayed, or refused to process.  The school plays and concerts she attended but was careful not to applaud because everyone knows that women who become performers or artists don't have happy marriages.  Sometimes she even tells me she detests her husband.  Those are the conversations I like the best.  But I realize I am grasping at honesty straws in a bathtub of milky memories where snow both melts and falls at the same rate.  And I know for my father snow was quite a different symbol.  It was the responsibility of shoveling, and maintaining the cars, and the claustrophobia of being shut in with children and a wife who performed and cooperated but never really understood things.

I remember reading in college about the many words for snow among Eskimo people; how there was a word for fresh fallen snow and another for snow on water, and another for deep, soft snow.  It was sexy.  In college everything is sexy.  I also remember a word for 'snow cornice' which actually meant snow that was about to collapse or avalanche.  Father snow, for me.  I told my Mom about this tonight and she laughed like a child.  Lately she either laughs or cries when I tell her things.  She no longer knows how to react, but has all the inflections of normal conversation.  In a way, on the telephone, she is the same watery Jackie Kennedy silhouette I saw through the surface of the water--in 2 dimensions, as she is, as she needs to be.  She waves, she laughs--- she doesn't process sorrow or disappointment or shame, or guilt, or the weather, or the season, or the time of day.

I used to dread certain seasons-- they meant being sent away, or going back to school.  But I have never dreaded winter.  It feels safe and dark and the promise of snow is the promise of forgiveness, even if it disappoints us and doesn't arrive, because we still have the dream of snow, the sleep of snow-dreams.
Fuck the salt and the plows and the shovels and the MTA.  We New York dreamers got our snow day in spite.