Driving Mr. Madden

Throughout my life, my father was something of a mystery to me.  He had very rare moments of joy or lightness, but mostly he brooded-- he paced, he fretted, he lay awake at night.  Of course in the 21st century one would have recognized the classic symptoms of post-war PTSD, but in the 1950's, retired soldiers were expected to re-acclimate to civilian life-- to have families and jobs and be 'normal'.

Whether or not he was CIA, as some of my curious boyfriends were convinced, he'd had a challenging military enlistment punctuated by wounds and acts of great heroism. As many soldiers will attest, the accolades and medals do little to assuage the deep psychological trauma that went mostly unaddressed in those 'happy' days of the 1950's.  Many self-medicated with alcohol or prescriptions, but they were mostly on their own.

At some point in my adulthood, my mother tried to soften the emotional walls I'd created to shield myself from the effects of his moods and disapproval. I was referred to as 'the one who works in bars' with a kind of built-in question as though not even that description was apt. Anyway, during one of his more difficult depressive episodes, she related a story to open my heart  a little. As his enabler and life partner, it was rare that she divulged anything, especially to a daughter whose natural inclinations toward the arts and free speech made her suspect and outside the realm of trust.

During his European service, my father as Captain of the 101st Airborne had a driver. Besides his military field heroics he also participated in some dangerous undercover intelligence missions.  His driver was a black man from Kentucky. They became close. The driver made him promise if he was ever killed in action, my father would go to his family in person and deliver the news.  He did not want his poor mother who could not even read to have one of those terrible telegrams she feared.  So they made a pact.  One day during a risky maneuver, they were attacked and a grenade blew up the jeep.  My father was wounded but not critically; his driver, attempting to shield my father, took the brunt and was instantly killed.

After 9/11 my father was given a hero's license plate which allowed him to park anywhere in the city.  For some reason he seemed a little lightened by this recognition.  While he still experienced periodic deep depressive episodes, he began to attend weekly Old Guard meetings. Being too macho to submit to psychiatric treatment, these meetings were therapeutic.  I guess he was able to pull this story from his memory...  one of the terrible guilts from which he suffered. Most of them were unavoidable-- the consequences of following military orders.  But this was a personal debt he'd left unpaid and it ate at him, decades later.

Why he never attempted to contact the family is a complicated mystery, like most of my father's narrative. For me who goes to great lengths to fulfill even the silliest of promises, this is baffling. But recently it occurred to me that among the landmarks of my life that most irked my father, I married a black man. Perhaps he saw this as a painful reminder and criticism of his personal failure. I don't know; he so rarely gave me a kind look or an embrace; I both feared and hated him.

Last week I read the Count of Monte Cristo... a classic I had written off long ago as a 'boys' book.  It was in my son's teenage library, untouched. And it was fantastically entertaining. Adventure, intrigue, conspiracy, murder, romance... everything one would want.  But most of all it was a story of not just revenge but the resolution of deep irreparable damage from the miscarriage of justice, the way one envious man can turn against another. The unlikely resolution of one man's trauma results in further damage. 

Today as a kind of personal dare I have begun the daunting Divine Comedy. Dante, like Dantès in the Dumas, had been wrongly accused, and the writing of this was a kind of retribution. Whatever the motive, I surely read it in school-- the Longfellow translation which is maybe not the best but I learned today how HWL faced this project just after his beloved wife was killed in a house fire. He, too, was wounded in the inferno. A double dare.  

As we age, the issues of guilt and anxiety weigh on us.  We look back and try to re-interpret our past as though there is a moral there. Sometimes we find understanding-- forgiveness. I tried hard to forgive my father, and have done so, to the extent that I have forgiven myself where he has not. We don't have an enlightened guide like Virgil to guide us through the layers of narrative, to shed light on the good and evil of our present which seems, like worlds past, to have confused the system of punishment and reward.  The life which seemed so easy and simple in the 1950's has become cluttered and confused. One wants to write a guidebook to take us through these times where there are literally millions of digital answers to whatever question we pose. A definitive contemporary Divine Comedy.

In the end, we are each of us responsible for not just ourself, but someone else-- maybe one other person-- fulfilling the promise we made, or explaining, or listening to the man on the bus who looks ill... or the lady on the park bench who stares, day after day, who leaves her lunch untouched on the seat. I am sure that my father, to someone else, was a hero-- was perhaps kind, and understanding. And I hope somehow that driver's mother-- now long dead, certainly, was able to find peace.  After all-- no one's presence could really have relieved the pain of losing her son.  Maybe my father knew that. He was a believer, I think. Maybe at the end, he finally forgave himself.

Rust Never Sleeps

To distract myself tonight I turned on television... couldn't help checking in on this new Alec Baldwin reality show.  It's been so over-advertised-- teased, excerpted, meme'd and photo-bombed on various platforms, and yet we New Yorkers and NYC expats love seeing our city on camera, in nearly any context. Urban selfies.  

Years ago I double dated with Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin-- the first one, Kim.  We were at a long table in a trendy Tribeca restaurant with a few intimate friends.  They sat at opposite ends; it was obvious from their awkward interaction that either they'd not quite recovered from a pre-dinner argument or maybe they'd interrupted an intimate evening to come out.  Something was off.  I sat by her-- acknowledged one of the most beautiful women in cinema, at that moment.  Honestly, I couldn't stop looking at her face, with little make-up and ungroomed hair; she kept wrapping herself in a sort of shawl, as though she wanted to disappear.  He, on the other hand, was chatty and charming-- funny, using that voice actors learn to project confidence. Like a pointed tone.  

For some reason, that night, I was on the cusp of a new relationship and the tension depressed me. They were so familiar-- it was like a movie and I was somehow part of it. I couldn't shake her emotional shadow... which turned out to be sort of an omen.  I was a new mother and they were maybe not even quite married.

Seeing his aging, subdued persona tonight was surprising. His wife, obviously, was the host and star of the Baldwin show, despite the fact that her raison d'être is her famous husband. I realize he needs a PR renovation... and who wants to put the father of seven small children in prison for eighteen months? But Hilaria with her affectations and fake Spanish accent which she attempted to explain in the minutes I watched, well... I'm not a customer. Like most reality shows since the Loud Family era, it seemed scripted and planned and awkward and cringeworthy most of the time.  Yes, the kids are cute... and the looming cloud of the shooting incident which was clearly devastating was compelling... but it seemed somehow inappropriate for her to speak of it.  The family 'angle' is surely the most convincing plea for innocence... and as always, it is moot to keep on punishing for a tragic incident... but someone died.  The boundary between film and real life was crossed, and there is no happy ending here.  I felt manipulated by his terrible appearance, her perfect little stagey mother-moments. I can only wonder how the family of the deceased will view this.  I've had quite enough and it didn't sway me one way or the other.  At filming, the jury was still out.  Now that he's been found innocent, is there any relief? 

Lately I've been trying to find a way to honor my deceased father whose war record and heroism left him with lifetime psychological scars.  It was often tough simply being around him; as a father he was short-tempered and preoccupied. The more I read about Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, his difficult path through the war, the more I wonder that he functioned at all.  The killings, the bloodshed, the constant danger and massive destruction. He witnessed not just mutilation and death but stepped on it, parachuted down into it... experienced wounds and undoubtedly overwhelming, unrelenting anxiety.

Yet here is a Hollywood-handsome man-- with a wonderful supportive birth family, and a brood of his own here... maybe a difficult older daughter from the first marriage... but here he is in this perfect Hamptons paradise... accused of manslaughter... from what.. playing with real guns on a fake set? Is PTSD  the same diagnosis as psychiatrists assign lifetime war veterans who were ordered to shoot at maybe innocent people who were simply on the opposite side, and therefore merited death?  Kill or be killed is a conundrum and the very crux of war.

What is wrong with all of us, we humans who settle international vendettas with death and violence... who make statements by destroying monuments, who negotiate with mutilated flesh and the killing of children? There are people just blocks away shooting one another, threatening... angry. It might be more compelling to have us consider these consequences.  Comparatively, Alec is just a broken man.  The spinning narrative is how can we punish seven innocent children by removing their father and leaving them to bear the stigma of this tragedy?  It doesn't seem productive.  Nor does this reality show which hopefully will not annoy the family of Halyna Hutchins with its stilted portrayal of the privileged, happy life she will never have.

A weapon of destruction is not safe in any hands... it's not the manufacturers, it's the people.  It's us.  There is film-- a movie-- acting.. and then there are guns.  It seemed the 'Rust' set was more of a horrifying reality show than anything we will see from the Baldwins this season.

With Your Eyes

On Inauguration Day, the cold air like a knife seemed to split the country in half-- those who celebrated, and those who tried to concentrate on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. It was like a warning or a judgment-- for those of us who were anxious and upset, the arctic air was not reassuring. 

Unable to sleep, I watched an old film called Crisis-- a documentary featuring President Kennedy and his brother Robert handling a civil rights crisis.  It was another version of America... our leaders, presented in black and white like a home movie... having breakfast with their families-- fathers, credible men... going to work to challenge unlawful segregation traditions.  They were leaders... taking the country from prejudice and injustice into some kind of better future. It felt not just right but righteous.

The confirmation of POTUS 47 felt to me like a TV show-- from what I watched, apparently a badly produced tragic comedy of errors and mistakes, but a show above all-- and the installation of a version of America that feels eerily like the death of Hope. The promises feel like threats, and the concept of justice feels like a kind of volley back and forth between oddly distorted principles.

Seeing our 1963 Attorney General at his desk, waiting for a call... there was a solidity-- the desk, the room.  It was human-scaled.  No one had make-up or airbrushing... there was sweat, there was conversation in real time.  For me it went beyond nostalgia; it underscored this new sense of defeat I have shared with close friends.  We are betrayed, we are slipping somehow. The news is everywhere and overwhelming; the media-- rather than the message-- accompanies our life and we, it.

Continuing my interviews by telephone, I miss the heavy black instrument with the rotary dial... it somehow felt like truth. I speak to these enthusiastic and slightly nervous students and occasionally feel I am selling them a dream-- I am describing things that no longer exist, explaining realities that have evaporated into digital screens. They will never know the version of a woman who misses closing herself into a phone booth in a dive bar and making a romantic call-- a confession, an intimacy.

I've been reading Cesare Pavese. His novels are surprisingly colloquial, although one feels the tensions of fascism, of the German occupation, and the scars of WWII.  I look at maps of northwest Italy... at pictures of Turin... his places, too, perhaps no longer exist. I am listening to and absorbing the author's version of his nostalgia. Pavese suicided at the age of 41, just after he was acknowledged for his writing. Among his best poems is one (translated) line 'Death will come with your eyes'.  It haunts me. His disappointment, his sorrow, his obsession in one novella with a suicidal character-- his empathy.

My friend Elizabeth died very early Monday morning, in the dark.  In her hospice room it was surely lit, as medical rooms are.  She had not been herself for several weeks now. During her illness of five years, we became friends... she called me nearly every night for a year or two... and we gossiped, we laughed, we became intimates over the telephone.  I have a landline, still; it's necessary for this kind of communication. We'd had little in common before, but we grew together.  I miss her terribly; what we created, together, is completely gone. She deteriorated, over the years, but she was brave and never tried to escape her fate.  She was incredibly sympathetic when I had my accident; she joked that I'd ruined my arm just to experience her parallel paralysis.  We laughed and talked about men. It was like an affair... and now it's done.

For months now, I pick up my 12-string at night and play a few songs... the one that comes, every night, is the Free song, Soon I Will Be Gone.  In the year before Alan's death, at one of our back-to-back solo gigs, Alan sang this.  It was withering. I wept. Do not sing this, Alan, I warned him... and he answered me... it is a prediction, with this rare dark look in his eyes that were usually laughing.  But I've taken it up-- it's become my personal anthem that I sing every night in the dark, at 4 or 5 AM. It binds me to him, maybe.  

Tonight brought a fatal plane crash. We who will be gone sooner rather than later are shaken by this kind of news.  We are heartbroken for the fire victims, for the children of Gaza, for the undocumented Mexicans in East Harlem who are afraid to pick up their pantry items because they might be arrested. One mother told me she is keeping her children home from school, from fear they will be somehow seized.

Last night I walked home from a gig in Harlem.  An insane man on 113th and Lenox grabbed me... Read the signs, he kept yelling, with his sour breath. At last he let me go.  Shaken-not-stirred, I'd heard at the bar; it became my mantra for the last 20 blocks. There are people in this city who do not go out in the sun; they are pale and many wear black. It's sort of an unspoken cult-- some are women who with vanity preserve their skin; many are writers and musicians. Some wear sunglasses at night.  When I walk home late, I imagine they are at their sills, looking out-- blessing the dark empty streets and keeping me safe, like black angels... my witnesses.

I am glad to be home. Elizabeth will no longer phone me at 3 AM and I will no longer sit on the floor in the dark trading stories until her drugs put her to sleep. But tonight I will pick up my guitar and like a sort of trance I will sing the song... the dark anthem, the funeral hymn, the Inauguration song... 

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait

My son, as well as billions of other statistically-conscious tech subscribers, counts his daily steps.  Apparently, without arranging this,  he demonstrated how the little phone he forces on me automatically records my every move, and probably some other things, although now that I'm finding it 'parental' and invasive, I am careful to leave it home often.  My son, competitive by nature, easily exceeds 20,000 steps daily.  This includes some morning runs... but still, it's fairly impressive. 

My father was a pacer.  He paced the hallways of our home; unless he was drinking and reading the papers, he was generally fretting about something.  While he drove or commuted by train, I'd walk with him when he allowed-- on a holiday, to a funeral or service... he was impatient, and for a man who was average height, he had a huge stride.  I ran to keep up with him-- or I skipped, or side-hopped; he paid little attention to me.  I can only imagine if they'd had cellphones back then, he'd be walking, like his grandson, constantly checking market prices or news.  Bad news seemed to engage him more.  It was as though he waited for this-- he took odds against better outcomes; the consolation prize for downturns was a sort of private victory. 

Every Memorial Day since his death, I try to take some moments to honor his difficult legacy: there are the medals and citations-- the wounds which healed, and the ones that didn't. In my childhood home attic, among scrap books and memorabilia, were boxes of his various uniforms.  On top sat a pair of brown leather paratrooper boots-- the final pair he was wearing on the beaches of Normandy, and the pair he wore when they liberated the camp at Dachau.  The boots were wrinkled and scuffed; the heels were well worn, and the weight of them was considerable.  I'd put them on, as a girl, and could barely lift my feet. We never took these things downstairs. I'm not sure he ever looked at them... he rarely went up, except to adjust the huge house fan or to whack a couple of bats from the eaves.  

We barely spoke from Middle School onward.  He was a tough man, with emotional burdens beyond anything I comprehended.  He'd come from a large family of embittered immigrants.  It seemed there was no joy anywhere in his past-- not a single happy photo. In fact, there were no photos, save the official US Army portraits. I was a little unforgiving and tough myself; I had my ideas and my leanings-- my poetry and my art.  None of this interested him. He laid it out one day-- if anything should happen to my mother, my sister and I should pack our bags because it was beyond him to take care of girls.  I took it to heart.

Still, as children do, I struggled. Not just taking two or three steps for every one of his, but to extract even one tiny instant of acknowledgment. My high-school literary magazine chose to publish a drawing I did of his combat boots.  At first I didn't understand that this was my version of a portrait-- a tribute.  He said nothing about it, nor about the poetry that meant much to me. He acknowledged a writing award I won at graduation; it came with a check toward college and that seemed to satisfy him in some way.  The boots obsessed me.  My two friends and I bought old ice-skates and removed the blades with great difficulty.  They were stiff and it was hard to walk-- but we wore them to school, like soldiers.  

I'm reading Tomás Nevinson-- the final brilliant novel from Javier Marías.  One feels a kind of relief in these literary authors that not only assume a kind of common referential canon but are willing to violate it. There is an anecdote, at the beginning, after a terse discussion on the finality of death via guillotine, when he relates the miracle of St. Denis who carried his severed head over five miles to his burial site.  Apparently a woman commented-- it's not the distance, it's the first step that counted.  This becomes a theme-- taking the first step. And the corollary-- the step you didn't take-- the opportunity to assassinate Hitler before he masterminded and enabled the evil Reich nightmare which resulted in not just massive tragedy but consequently my own father's heroic military trajectory. 

My son and his friends do not enlist; nor are they drafted.  They have other wars to fight-- other competitions.  There is sports, in the service of which many kids extract some of the lessons of military training.  On this holiday, we watch endless documentaries and films; every generation has its own demons and its own horrible wars.   In the ceremonies and memorials everything is clean and uniformed and honorable. The way a soldier dies is beyond horrible.  The witnesses-- their comrades-- carry these images forever.  Maybe the most difficult steps my father took in later life were the twelve designated by AA.  While he remained sober, I don't think he saw them through, nor did he reap the benefit of relief or enlightenment.

But I realized, on Memorial Day-- opening the Marías book after going several thousand steps with my son, how much the psychology of these former spies and agents and old soldiers-- many of whom survived the horror only physically-- feels familiar.  I somehow absorbed bits of the wounds and shadows that scarred my father's capacity for joy.  Perhaps the boots were not just souvenir battlefield-testimony but a version of his emotional legacy as well. RIP, my father and all old soldiers-- forgotten, memorialized, decorated, mutilated, buried, missing, glorified, dishonored, misunderstood, and forever changed.

The Vanishing

 I've always been subject to a little claustrophobia. It could stem from a series of early childhood experiences locked in a closet but that's maybe too simple.  A couple of malfunctioning elevator episodes didn't help.  But the root of it feels deeper-- almost genetic. I've mentioned before that my father kept a packed suitcase in the closet at all times.  As for me, in the deepest, most tender sweet spot of a promising relationship... at the very crux of mutual intimacy, I get the urge to run.  It's a serious flaw; it's caused pain to others and I've paid a price. 

Analyzing, I used to pout as a teenager and warn prospective boyfriends not to wall me in with their expectations.  I even tried a psychiatrist who had the usual theories and a few more, but no cure. Of course, raising a child on my own, I easily laid aside my angst and put his priorities first.  But these days there's nothing I love more than the sense of a new day like a blank canvas-- no calendar, no appointments-- just a wide open time-field waiting for my footprint. It's a sense of security for me-- perhaps a small reassuring exercise in personal freedom.

Last night, at the close of a fairly non-scripted day, I watched a late-night film called The Vanishing-- the one from 1988, in Dutch, based on a book called The Golden Egg in which the heroine suffers from a recurring nightmare of claustrophobia.  In the film, she is part of a couple on a trip-- driving. They argue a bit; she vanishes at a gas station where she is abducted, unobserved, by a villainous character and never seen again.  Newspapers publicize her disappearance, her boyfriend spends years trying to figure it out.  But eventually the abductor begins to contact him.  He will reveal the mystery, he says, if the boyfriend agrees to the very same fate. The obsession for truth overcomes him and he agrees-- is chloroformed and wakes up in the dark where his lighter reveals he is in a coffin, buried alive.  Absolute horror.  Double horror.

For anyone prone to claustrophobia and film-empathy, this makes for a sleepless night.  Coupled with that, I learned of the death of a friend.  In grief, I cannot help but explore afterlife theories.  At least one member of the deceased's family is a devout Catholic and takes great comfort in the assurance of a heavenly transition. I, on the other hand, am not sure, have entertained all possibilities.  

My mother who was interred above my father in a double grave feared burial and begged me to have her cremated. My older sister thought otherwise.  Still, after six years, it haunts me.  Although we know logically the dead do not think or feel, I regret that I was outvoted and could not give her this simple last relief.  

In case we choose to ignore our age, the mailbox periodically reminds us with funeral options, cemetery real estate offers and hospice information. It's wearying and worrying... and while the ultimate choice remains to our heirs, I wish I could make some kind of peace with my ultimate destination.  I find funerals-- while comforting in a way, also appalling.  One of my friends was given a wake with a dramatic presentation in an open coffin. I kept hearing her implore me to tell people to fuck off and stop looking at her.  Some of them she openly disliked.  It was so unfair...  as though here is our final worldly act and we don't get the last word.  

My father the emotional claustrophobic had spent much time in the trenches during WWII.  In the end he lay in his simple coffin, draped with the American flag as a hero, and seemed to embrace his fate in the same manner. It was as though death had been a kind of relief to a life as a 'tough-guy' with its anxieties and unvoiced issues.  For us who have been raised with at least the illusion of free choice, the nightmare is being overruled-- told what to do-- held against our will or tied down or up.

I often wander through the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum.  I must say, the custom of buryng the dead with their possessions-- with some space-- is appealing.  Not practical for us Americans here.  Even to name a fraction of a bench in Central Park for my Mom was impossible. They are taken... no waiting list for the dead... they are permanent.

Anyway, I will continue to struggle with my philosophies and ideals-- to weigh logic against belief, to pray for my friends, to deeply speak to God, to thank Jesus often, and nevertheless to wake up periodically in a nightmare of captivity, of immobility.  Imagination? We get up, walk around, open a window, breathe.  For now.

Coney Island Baby

Now that my father has been gone 3 years, Memorial Day is not the same.  Not that he spoke much about the war; it took him a good 50 years after his last medals were processed to begin meeting with other WWII veterans and survivors.  He never really considered his daughters as 'legacy', and one thing I respected about him most-- he considered it bad form to self-aggrandize and accept accolades of bravery when the real heroes had come back in boxes.

In my childhood, it was called 'Decoration Day' and it fell on May 30th.  No Monday euphemisms in the 50's and 60's.  Holidays were observed-- not shopped and marketed to death.  Yes, there was a cookout... even a trip to Washington DC where I experienced presidential and military Memorial monuments which were humbling and inspiring.  I was maybe 5-- the scale of these buildings was enormous... the lines of people waiting to enter were impressive; it was my first brush with 'America'.  What did I know? My father was a mystery-- a man with a hard shell who occasionally held my hand in crowds.

I've been tough on my father, as he was incredibly tough on me.  In the current culture, fathers are so hands-on... they are intimately involved in pregnancies, present at the birth, they change diapers and share parenting equally.  They are emotional and tender... this is accepted and acceptable... but maybe not so in my father's day.  After all, here was a tough military hero suddenly dropped in the big city with a young wife and domestic responsibility.  He left home a boy, lived with terror and violence and a daily task of staying alive against massive odds and challenges... then returned laden with medals and souvenir uniforms to join the city workforce-- to get an apartment, shop for groceries.  Every day on the subway and on street corners we are accosted by these displaced veterans who are struggling to adjust to regular life, and failing.  We are aware of this now.  Back then, there was little empathy built into the system-- they were expected to simply pick up the ball and continue.

The concept of a father, I suppose, was as important as the actuality.  Even though I had little communication with mine, it was assumed he paid bills, went to work, had the car fixed, etc.  Kind of the way we viewed our President as kids-- the Father of our country.  It was Eisenhower, during much of my childhood-- then Kennedy came and we all bonded.  He was the movie-star President-father-- our handsome hero  who was camera-ready and charming.  Brave and smart.  We didn't pick our heroes apart in those days;  Elvis was King.

By the same token, the concept of children was different.  No one bothered to ask me if I was happy or unhappy.  I was told where to go and what to do-- Scout wilderness camp, music, ballet... my parents placed their kids into the same slots all their neighbors kids were in.  There was no discussion, no question-and-answer.  I grew up and left home a teenager.  I had little desire to return.  As I studied and observed the world, I realized some things just look normal and pretty.  My independence, despite the ultra-dependent model of my Mom-- such a perfectly functional 50's style housewife-- was supreme.

Memorial Day now is a day of nostalgia for me.  Sure-- the sense of oncoming summer, and the absence of the excitement we felt as children about the end of school coalesces on the brink of June, but for me-- well, no parades, but memories.  As a single parent, it always brought the seasonal stress of how to amuse my son with no school and very little money.  There were camp options, sports options... but essentially we spent summers sweating it out in the city, me feeling guilty about lacking the means for a vacation... my own father judging me for my failure to do this, but never offering to help out; not his style, nor mine.  It is also the anniversary of the death of my baby daughter-- something I could not process for years.  It was a beautiful day... she held out until the post-Memorial Day Tuesday at lunchtime.

Coney Island was a frequent treat when I was very small.  Ditto for my own son.  It was something I could manage-- a subway ride, a day on the Boardwalk.. a few kiddie rides and a hotdog.  This year I kept remembering one incident... we took the D train to Brooklyn on the Friday after school.  My son had a full scholarship to a prestigious prep school which was great-- but all his friends would be whisked off to exotic weekend destinations and Fridays were kind of a finger pointing at me tattooed with 'Loser'.  So he was maybe 10--- had just reached the required height to ride the Cyclone.  I'd had my fill of that roller coaster as a child.  It was a rite of passage and I closed my eyes and made it through-- terror being the operative emotion.  Something about those old wooden rides... but my own son was determined-- it was like a test, a badge.  I'd put aside a little extra-- that was becoming tough for me-- to even afford a day at the amusement park.

So there we were, at maybe 4 PM-- we circled the park, watched a few games... finally approached the great ride, the King of the amusement park.   How he had grown in one year-- we'd measured him with his running sneakers...  even my heart was racing at the foot of the rollercoaster... we could hear screams every several second intervals and the unique rumbling noise of wheels on wooden tracks.  I'm really hungry, my son announced... there was a small stand across from the entrance that sold corncobs.  We ordered one... they were so good... he drank a coke... slowly... the cars stopped, dropped off their happy human passengers and reloaded...  watched another course.  Another.  He ordered another ear of corn... ate it with deliberation I'd never seen in a boy.  We watched.  It was loud... terrifying...  Five o'clock passed and lines were becoming longer.

8:15... the sun was going down... Four ears of corn, one pretzel for me... I finally announced I think I'd run out of cash...  there was barely enough for the Cyclone ticket-- we'd have to walk home.  So he scolded me, my son... damn you, Mom... let's go.  We rode quietly back, changed trains... he said not one word to me... I never brought it up; he never again asked to go back to Coney Island except to watch Marbury and Sebastian Telfair on the courts as a teenager... that was that.

I often thought-- if he'd had a father-- my father--  he would have been walked up to the ride, strapped in... done.  I had enough issues mothering a boy;  but I wasn't going to coerce him into anything.  I went to all his games, wildly cheered him on... God knows how I ended up with the star athlete, the girl-magnet in High School...  Maybe this was kind of a rebellion?  Anyway, it was his path.  He once commented, after some kid's Dad was coaching his basketball team-- you know, Mom... I'd rather have no father than that father.   There was a man downstairs who'd been a professional soccer star in South America.  He was rough and tough and his son was gay-at-birth.  The soccer star screamed and gave beatings and the kid often took refuge in my apartment; he'd sit and paint, wearing one of my hats; he had incredible talent.  Still, I wasn't sure.  The very word father made me emotional.

On Memorial Day Monday my son who is nearly thirty now buzzed my apartment unexpectedly.  He is rarely in my neighborhood and I am usually at home these days, holiday or not, obliviously working on music and poetry projects.  I was dressed in old clothes, unprepared for guests... and he was with a new girlfriend-- they'd been on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum-- one of my favorite places.  They came up.  She looked at his old room, the photos I have on my shelves and walls...  and I realized he was showing her the little monuments and souvenirs of his past-- no medals like in my childhood home-- but his old musician/writer mother in her cabinet of curiosities here... this boychild I had brought into the world with no skills or experience-- without a man to show him the ropes,  here he was-- no military honors, no Cyclone ticket stub, no cookouts and grilling contests or company picnics, but plenty of memories --not ashamed but proud of his roots and the  past we had somehow created in our own random uncharted family way.  Something to salute.

King of Hearts

About a year ago I found a fat envelope in my mailbox from a man in rural Pennsylvania.  He is 88 years old and enclosed a cover letter explaining he is an artist and wants a gallery show.  Then there were maybe 20 small drawings, collages… he tried everything-- abstract, Miro-esque colors-- even a few erotic line drawings like Picasso-- a Calder-ish piece…  "Hurry up," his note urged-- "I don't have much time left."

I've been meaning to write him, to acknowledge how I appreciated actual paper in this digital email universe, and that among the 'samples' I really could frame and enjoy one or two.  I have yet to do this.  After all, this is not the response he wants.  He wants to be acknowledged, to be known, like so many in this world of cheap fame and public narcissism.  Or maybe he wants to be loved, and he is 88 and this is maybe a path to some kind of invitation.  And like so many artists and musicians in this culture, he is prematurely exhibiting work that has yet to find a purpose-- he is promoting a passion that has not quite matured, and offering goods that are half-baked.  He'll figure this out-- or he won't.  He may be a member of that majority of Americans who walk into MOMA and say their kids are better artists than Pollock or de Kooning.  He can't see the process or the soul-- he can only see his own need.  
And there are just so many examples of contemporary artists whose fame far exceeds their merit-- anything I write him would be a little useless, so I still struggle with this task, see the envelope on my desk every month or so-- worry that his obituary will precede his exhibition, and hope he has found a more productive occupation, or a wall somewhere.

My father died last week.  I should say 'passed away' but he was not an easy man and nothing was peaceful or smooth.   He seemed to have inverted his life in a way; he was a true decorated hero of WWII-- one of the Band of Brothers-- Captain of the 101st Airborne, awarded silver and bronze stars, several purple hearts-- led his troops on the beach at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge-- suffered wounds, took bullets-- and in the end refused to self-aggrandize for the television journalists, knowing the true heroes went to their graves, and for the survivors-- no matter how admirable their victory-- it's not military macho-ethical to bask.

Then he married my Mom-- a true love story-- 75 years together, 70 as husband and wife…had kids-- and somehow suffered in silent stoic self-denial the post-traumatic stress of his heroism.  He didn't like me much.  I was slated to be the ivy-league hero of his version of the fairy tale.  But I took a hairpin turn.   Not exactly a rebel-- just an independent thinker-- someone who learned from watching the parachute of his life become a claustrophobic soft-fall of personal angst and a kind of failure.  I mean, military accolades and medals--presidential commendations at 25-- like starting out playing Madison Square Garden, the Kennedy Center-- where do you go from there?  Having some kind of fame or acknowledgment too young can fuck us up-- all rock and rollers know that-- it comes with guilt and regret and self-doubt and success is not always good for ambition.

In my generation failure became a kind of cult.  The alternative-- the nerds-- the skinny girls were suddenly beautiful -- the confessional songwriters and Leonard Cohens went straight to our hearts.
I watched my father, witnessed his tough love, his disapproval of my poorer decisions.  He never forgave me for rejecting a Harvard Law scholarship-- I guess to him that was a version of his military medals-a curt and potent reply to the question How is your daughter?  Action that speaks.  And here I am-- farther and farther from his paternal dream… the Princeton girl playing in dive bars, struggling home on subways,  having a baby in a public hospital, raising kids on my own-- wearing used clothing and eating shitty food.  It infuriated him, disrespected him, humiliated him.  I'm a woman now-- a failure, in his esteem… no closure, no accolades that he could comprehend… no house in the country, no husbands he could play tennis with.  He did love my son… an apple that fell just far enough from the tree to please us both.  Then again-- I don't expect kids to fulfill my dream-- I pray only that they fulfill their own.

My artist/'stepmother' who took her own life 2 summers ago at 96-- craved fame.  At the end of her life she had an acclaimed show which could have been a vanity exercise-- we'll never know-- the gallery owners simultaneously took over half of her coveted townhouse, so it was complicated.  But as they say, it didn't suck… and then there was the aftermath-- the future which inevitably comes with more speed than ever, these days… and last month's darling is next month's crumpled flyer.  Her work was difficult-- her physical discomfort at 96 was not conducive to execution and she suffered, more than anything, from a kind of denial of loneliness-- fear of death, fear of losing control--  it obsessed and compelled her to suicide in a sort of elaborate ritual.  She was angry at me at the end.  So was my Dad--
not for anything I did, I must remind myself-- because this is painful-- but because I failed to enhance their personal version of celebrity.  I tried-- I tried hard… but I failed both of them.  After all, as I said-- I embraced the cult of failure long ago.  It is kind of an oath you take when you commit to your own work.  Above all, you must be honest and you must dedicate yourself to finding your truth.  But grieving for these people who are supposed to be your role models and heroes-- is difficult when you have failed them and know that you are not an honored presence at their burial.

On the day my father died I'd planned to attend another funeral-- a waiter I'd known at BB King's for years-- a proud African with a world-beating smile and a sweetness that oozed from his shining skin.  His hugs were healing and wonderful; he never failed to ask about my son; he was playful and affectionate-- had known him since he was a boy.  Anani got cancer and died quickly; I was only notified after his death.  We knew little about him-- he had no family here, a sole brother in Africa.  He lived in his Jersey City church and the small service was held there.  I received the news about my father that morning; somehow I felt disloyal attending another's funeral and my tears might have been duplicitous.  But at my father's spartan burial, I realized I hadn't loved him; I mean, I honored him and respected him as a daughter; but I had never for a moment felt loved.  Me, who weeps over a fallen bird, and finds lyricism in a key trapped in asphalt.  I failed to love my Dad.  Dropping the shovel of dirt on his grave, I thought of Anani-- the lovely, loving human who was so alone and gave every single one of us so much of his heart.   But I also forgave my father for not loving me.  I apologized for my choices, and thanked some God-- not his-- that I had followed my passion because we can never make anyone happy in this world.  We can love-- we can give generously-- we can comfort-- but for happiness we are on our own.  

When my stepmother died, she was so angry at me for not furthering her career that it was easier to let her go.  I have learned to protect myself when someone withholds.  I am no longer the girl that falls hard for men who cannot give love, like my Dad.  I love easily-- I love strangers, I love my band members.  I looked at my son during the burial service and I know how I love him, but how I would never put a price on that.   I love my nephew and my niece, even though they are cautioned not to trust me.  My Dad was a military man; he chose sides and he chose my sister.  I don't see things that way, but I accept her enmity and do not waste my heart.  We were once children and I had her back and now is now.  I know too much.  I think I have his brain, but as for the rest, I feel even physiologically allied with my Mom.  She has lost her mental capacity, but I know she loved me.  I love her as a daughter and as a woman.  At the lovely cemetery in the country, I looked skyward for strength on a cold and sunny day.  How many deaths were being celebrated and mourned that day… so many… even right there in that place-- they were all around us.  Happy families-- sad families--  widows and orphans--life goes cruelly and mercifully on.  In the sky above formations of birds were providing a silent funeral dance-- visual music.  They fly in unison, these birds-- a kind of harmony we humans must learn and practice.  So many of us do not find comfort in our own kind or kin… but that is okay.

When I got home I cooked dinner for my older upstairs neighbors and some newer friends.  I love my friends.  I felt loved and I felt better.  It has been a week now; I've worked and written and found a version of closure.  Tonight I put one of my pen-pal-artist's pieces in a frame.  At least he will have a private exhibition here, he will be quietly acknowledged, wherever he is, among my home collection of celebrated and uncelebrated artists.. .and that is more than many of us will have.  My friend came by and noticed it-- I love that little collage, she said, and who did that?  I gave his name, without the history… and now Mr. Aubuchon is having his quiet Warholian moment.

A few extraordinary things have happened this week.  Maybe in some version of the story my father will become my angel, my advocate from the afterlife.  As I thought that thought today, the word angel appeared on my screen from elsewhere.  I am remembering going to work with my Dad, having breakfast with him at the Trattoria near Grand Central, and him showing up for Grandparent's Day at my fatherless son's school picnic.  This is progress, this is better.  I will always have my stepmother's lovely paintings on my wall--- the best of these are the ones she liked least.  They speak to me with clarity and strength; they inspire me.  Anani, I will never forget you.  The King, your commemorative poster at B B King's called you… because you had a royal soul.  You were an angel in life and death; there must be some medal for that in heaven-- a gold heart?  Amen. A-women.