La Recherche des Chaussettes Perdues

The other evening, skimming through a drawer in my son's old room, I came across an infant sock.  In a Proustian moment, I was sucked into one of those emotional 'rivers' of the past. The tiny sock was decorated with charming colorful train cars, but like something one no longer sees. I could recall with some clarity how this was the first article of clothing that seemed to engage my baby boy at three or four months.  He'd stare at his feet particularly in this pair of socks... wave them around and coo.  No other pair-- no matter what color, pattern, picture-- had this effect, like a magic lantern-- they sparked him, gave him a kind of obvious joy.

But one day, as babies do, he must have over-enthusiastically kicked or pulled or randomly peeled during one of our marathon walks through the city... and a sock was gone-- missing. I retraced our steps, frantic... with that new-mother passion, but no success.  There is some statistic somewhere, surely metaphorically speaking, about how humans spend six months of our lives looking for lost socks. That day added significantly to my total.

Perhaps because he is my genetic offspring, he somehow processed the loss... and while I still put the single train-sock on him, and it evoked the same cooing and chirping sounds of obvious happiness, I had to pair it with a blank. He looked at me; he gestured and seemed to even speak in baby gibberish. There is something not quite right, Mom, he wanted to express... something is missing!

One of my all-time favorite photographic essays is Nicholas Nixon's ongoing visual chronicle of the Brown sisters.  Featured in the New York Times several years ago, these are a series of group portraits of four sisters-- taken annually and chronologically-- through their lives. We see them as girls, then as young women, then slowly aging-- shifting positions subtly. We read on their faces their increasing maturity, their deepening texture and complexity, and their tiny sorrows and difficulties.  Maybe because the elder sisters are around my age, I see myself in their composite. Of course in this era of AI, one can digitally age a face in seconds. But nearing fifty analogue years of 'chronicle', the project grows more and more compelling to those of my generation.  

Having weathered both the standard griefs of a normal life as well as the unexpected losses of recent years, I can't help a sense of dread that one year a sister will be gone-- and like a gap tooth in a formerly joyful smile, it will be all about the one who is 'missing'.  This is the reverse poetry of later life-- like the negative space of a photograph or the shadow which replaces its source, it is the absence that concerns me.  And I can't help imposing my emotional prejudices and narratives-- reading in their faces a break-up or abandonment-- of pain or suffering-- current and future illness.  There must be a dark one afflicted with some inherent unhappiness, a conflict or secret issue.

But they all seem so healthy... and so blessed in their sisterhood, their loving and tiny brushes against one another-- the gestures and casual affectionate touching.  Both posed and unposed, bravely facing the camera in a sort of womanly and familial solidarity... despite the passage of time, the disappearance of youth, one cannot help but envy.  Even the oldest, who is first to display the facial ravages of natural aging-- well, we know she is the fulcrum... especially loved by the photographer, her husband, whose compositional embrace is the 'extra'-- the 'other'-- less visible subject. 

What we don't see, what we supply-- the loves, the children-- the careers and informational details of these women who we implicitly trust-- and maybe one more than the others.  For me I am compelled by the eldest-- her womanly soul, her maternal-ness.  She is slightly ahead of me in years, has outwardly changed herself the least (even her hair is quite the same)-- she who in her graceful aging is deeply long-loved by her husband, to the extent that the gestalt of the sisters became part of their intimacy.  

A near-fifty-year marriage is like a sort of sea.  The extremes-- the shifts, the rhythms and constant motion-- the storms and dramas, thrashings, drownings, and then the future goes on with or without.  I never managed to log enough in either of mine to complete a journey; they were rather like crossings or explorations.  A little landlocked and seasick, I disembarked before they fully revealed. Contemplating the Brown sisters, the rich chronology of lives, I feel a bit remiss.  It's not exactly regret, but like my baby son sensing the lost sock in his underdeveloped intellect, you are not exactly sure but something seems to be missing.  

More than anything, ironically, it is the unseen which I 'see'-- the omnipresent photographer who understood the joys and the tiny sorrows, through all the ages he had known.  And for knowing-- for recognizing love, for somehow creating a future out of the present, and documenting a past which touches us all.  God protect the Brown sisters, I say to myself almost selfishly.  It is something to believe in-- something solid and real, bright and fading, old and new.  

I doubt my son would remember the tiny sock, if I showed it to him... nor would he have the sentimental response, if I tried to impart the narrative, or the patience to listen.  Sometimes I think he has taken a practical reverse life-lesson from me who has spent an inordinate amount of time searching for lost things, for sensing the missing even before it disappears. But maybe that is a clue to our lives-- that we must love what we have, here in the present-- even the small things, before they are washed away by the seas of life which will have their way with us all, in the end.

SMOKE

Yesterday would have been my father's 104th birthday.  He lived to nearly 97... fairly in compos mentis, surrounded by newspapers, brokerage statements, the bluish glow of Bloomberg on the television screen like a night-light... slipping in and out of consciousness toward the end, my mother in her medicated dementia watching from her recliner like a Whistler's Mother real-time tableau-- alternately panicky when he left the room, or wondering who this person on her sofa actually was-- her brother, maybe... certainly not her father who'd abandoned his family when she was very young.

My father was estranged from most of his own large family, seemed to have judged his parents as harshly as I maybe judged him.  He was never happy to see me; he couldn't pretend, and children see these things, with their heart.  My mother lit up when I came home from anywhere; even when she ignored me in my grungy jeans and motorcycle boots on Manhattan streets in the 1980's, it was a kind of wounded pride-- bourgeois disappointment.

But the month of June has always been about him-- his birthday, Father's Day since he was the true and only family patriarch... D-Day, on which he earned a slew of medals and honors.  I stopped attending family festivities at a point; I began to process his disapproval of me as unhealthy and if my absence hurt his pride in any way he would only have cursed me further.  

Having raised my son alone, we celebrated Father's and Mother's Day. Now so many of his friends have become parents, the meaning has been sort of re-branded.  This year I watched the scores of Mexican families barbecuing in the northern fields of Central Park-- joyfully kicking soccer balls around, celebrating a day off.  Most of these fathers work hard-- sometimes two jobs... the number of kitchen workers who shared the late-night uptown subway with me after gigs was impressive.  Many slept-- exhausted, grateful for the air-conditioning as I was. 

My father never seemed happy. He enjoyed certain men who visited; my parents socialized accordingly-- his tennis partners, commuting companions. Company seemed to provide relief that he didn't have to interact with his family.  He failed to appreciate the gifts we gave; even things I made for him, or a little musical we'd put on... he seemed distracted and preoccupied.  As a child, we take these things on-- we blame ourselves... we learn to judge ourselves harshly.  

I've written so many poems grappling with this... trying to excise the knot of it.  He was complicated, and I surely did not fathom his issues, his dark moods, his isolations, post-alcoholic depressions. Maddens, he once told my son, don't talk.  But I, too, am a Madden... and I do, and I will.

My best childhood friend never let go of her father issues.  To me, hers seemed comfortably flawed-- drank a little too much, crossed some lines... but he had pet-names for his sons and daughters... he was handsome and funny.  His indiscretions seemed human to me... his wife was so 'perfect'... I saw him once or twice in the city with other women... but I kept it to myself.  I saw my own father once with a beautiful young woman.  I did not tell anyone.  My sister and I invented little fictions about my mother-- that she had mysterious callers... I even brought anonymous flowers once... but she only blushed, and he barely looked up from the evening news.

We get over these things... or do we?  I learned in my life that betrayals were inevitable.  A parent failing their child is the first and worst of these.  My own son has not heard from his father for nearly 28 years?  Surely this has repercussions... and perhaps I engineered this in that perverse way psychologists point fingers at us for repeating generational pains and mistakes.  Perhaps I picked my husband because I knew somewhere there would be this 'leaving'.  It was like a prophecy-- a fulfillment.  I see so many couples where one or the other has checked out... they are there, but they are missing. Some have shifted their heart elsewhere... some have simply died, in a way... like an old plant that no longer blossoms.  

Are these punishments?  Deep-rooted desires for self-sabotage?  The meaning of family is so open to interpretation.  Gender has been opened to 'not-binary'.  But despite the extended boundaries of family-- so many of us seem stuck in this traditional and sometimes painful categorization.  There is a Father's Day and a Mother's Day.  Full stop. While I fretted over gifts and hand-made cards and cakes... I actually dreaded those Sunday mornings.  The cookout or dinner or whatever... it was stilted and non-spontaneous. There was no joy, except in the company who eventually went home and left us to our ostensibly perfect family.

Recently I randomly went on my mother's 'Legacy' web-obituary.  Mine were the only posts for some years... but suddenly there was a message from a girl who'd lived next door to us... she was older than I was.. she must be 80 now.  She recalled my mother as a sympathetic, wonderful person... her version was the young mother with perhaps a harsh tough handsome husband.  I remember this woman-- her father, too, was distant and off-putting.  She lives in Boston now... and apparently was having one of those moments-- where the past surfaces and some small component-- like seaglass on the beach-- shines through.  

We women weather life in a different way than our fathers did, all gender stereotypes aside.  Our mothers accepted things; we do divorces and separations and we move on.  Some days I look back and cherish my past love affairs as iconic and true... then sometimes I remember those brilliant guitarists and drummers and sax players... and I think... well, maybe they just wanted a gig.  

On the cusp of another July, entering a holiday weekend with mixed feelings-- Independence Day, fireworks day... I am accustomed to a little isolation-- more-so tonight with our air quality issues warning us to limit outdoor activities. I'm glad in a way to leave the month of June behind, with its paternal connotations-- baggage, people call it.  

Our Father Who Art in Heaven, I begin my prayers every night.  Not my biological father, but my Holy Father who is vague and perhaps judgmental as well. As much as it amuses me that I do this, I do it... like a kind of vow... but it comforts, it reassures, it lifts me... has been with me since I can remember-- mine... available, the words... the sentiment, a kind of vague protection? Or forgiveness.  Really the secret of life-- whether it's family or ourselves... we must let it go, but also acknowledge that (like the wildfire smoke, which is not even our doing) these things linger.  

Crossroads

I began this blog in early 2007.  I'd been ghost-writing cd reviews for a time, pretending to be a cynical teenaged harsh critic of music, and a British 'zine was paying a bit for my wallfly's-view of the post-mortem New York City scene-- the death of culture as we knew it, and some personal venting pieces.  The 'zine was bought out by some online publisher and by the time euros converted to pounds then dollars, I actually owed my bank for the wire.

A friend of mine at the time suggested I enter the online word-army: you'll catch like wildfire, she assured me, and before you know it you'll have book-deals and industry followers.  So here I am... I began with a bit more humor, ended up pleasing myself occasionally, accumulating readers-- sharing on Facebook-- peaking out at something like 1,000-1,200 a month.  No, I did not allow advertisements or cheap add-ons.  It's clean-- no web-pollution nor even the stock self-promotion and hyper-links I am constantly advised to weave in.  I sat down and fired off every two weeks or so.  I felt briefly 'completed'.  For close friends it was like one of those newsletters of which you send multiples at Christmas, but more frequent.  They could 'check-in' at their leisure.

This month, after a few early-November flashes of inspiration, I've been dragging my feet here.  I have always used myself-- my brutally honest self-- to gauge the barometric reading of the general public.  Admittedly,  I can almost feel the cold shoulder of viewers and on the rare occasions I check analytics, there are days where they log single-digit site visitors.  It is not lack of audience but the sense that I am burdening my readers with an adult version of homework.  Admittedly, my early pieces were more like stand-up routines-- funny and a little cruel; anonymity was the signature and I slogged quite a few mud-pies behind the disguise, to my own amusement.

Now I'm quite the confessed author of these 320 posts.  I own them, for better or worse.  They've become personal and emotional-- autobiographical and adult.  My life bleeds through the pores of these essays; perhaps it is the winding-down of my activity-career, the increasing ratio of rumination to action that has slowed their trajectory. Maybe they are simply weighted by this elephant of aging that has dogged so many of my old partners-in-crime and turned them from stage-divers to front-porch rockers.

Between the impeachment hearings, the democratic debates, the million-billion television offerings, mountainous piles of even decent literary output and journalism-- there are not enough seconds to eat, breathe, have a coffee... let alone pursue the kind of human drama that used to propel us.  My family has grown up or died off; I have few obligations there, but many friends who have become needy and solitary.  Our days, as my peers well know, seem to fly by; I am far less efficient and rarely make it through my lists.  I am easily side-tracked and actually enjoy the distractions of phone calls from ex-husbands, high-school classmates; I listen to the gossip of neighbors and the petty heartaches of schoolgirls.

Incidentally, the friend who suggested this blog turned out to be a lying drug-user whose sobriety I'd defended in court.  She was not only a husband-swindler but a pathological kind of manipulator who when I quietly distanced, inserted herself in my own family and created all kinds of bizarre twisted scenarios.  Needless to say, her prediction suffered the same fate.  She, I'm certain, has reinvented herself and managed to use the internet and the 'industry' for her own monetary gain.  Not so the victims of her treachery.  No worries, as my son and his generation reply to almost anything from an excuse to an apology to a car crash.

Will anyone miss me if I delete myself from this site?  If I propel myself into obsolescence, or simply extinguish the tiny LED match-flame that has become a bi-monthly stop-off for a dwindling few?  This year has been tiring; perhaps I am just weighted with the reality that my enthusiastic little projects receive little remuneration-- that I must hire marketing specialists in order to see my investments returned, that there is a formula:  You must pay to play, my dear...  when I thought that people would simply come-- even a few... and it would be all right.

No one promises anything in this life... it's not that I'm disappointed-- we're well beyond that.  It's just that I feel apologetic simply posting these things, and the last thing I need, in this phase of my life, is to be sorry to any version of 'public'-- to 'beg' for audience, as people do-- to Instagram myself onto some stage where people have agreed in advance to applaud.

So forgive me if I fail my commitment here; nearly 13 years is respectable... and it could be a phase; it could just be the moon or the cloud-cover that prevents me from observing tonight's meteor shower-- me who looks for signs on sidewalks and hears melodies in train wheels, who feels tonight as though I'm merely exercising some writer's muscle and occupying stagnant space rather than shooting across someone's horizon like a star. Maybe it's okay to just close your eyes.

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.

Walkin' Blues

I took one of those epic late-afternoon city walks with my niece last week… from the new Whitney Museum all the way up to East Harlem.  She observed that wherever she goes, there is inevitably someone crying on the street.  I'd definitely seen some criers at the Whitney-- really, really sad versions of performance art, as if the vibrant exhibitions, the architectural spectacle and the hoards of tourists and hipsters weren't enough.  We found ourselves dodging these traveling little passion-plays and mimes who seriously cheapened the art.  I pitied them-- they were embarrassing, amateurish and annoying.  In a city like New York, where the blocks are dense with every kind of entertainment and scam artist, the last thing anyone wants is to bring this carnival inside.

Outside there are the girls and their cell-phones-- gesticulating, yelling… boyfriend drama… couples coming together and coming apart… hungry, cranky babies… the Greek-drama variety of street beggars who screw up their face into a bawl to make us all dig deeper into our pockets.   Something just incriminating and wrong about this; no one of us really wants to 'wear' our tragedies in public.  Crying is an intimate and private privilege.  It has a reason, a story-- an aura.  On the street there is way too much competition.

My niece's current issues are with her family-- the difficult declaration of independence.  I know this family: they are, like so many others, way too invested in emotional incest-- in relying on their own members for acknowledgement and the American family version of 'happiness'.  She is sensitive and struggling and she cries.  She wants to break free, but she is not quite ready.  Crying is a symptom of metamorphosis from one stage to the next.  On the street, criers are hyper-aware of one another, the way addicts and users recognize each other.  For me, it can be contagious.  I am way softer than I would like and any kind of sorrow usually elicits my sympathy.

Our walk evolved from practical transportation into a sort of journey where you feel swept into something larger, and you can't stop.  We are different people-- her landmarks were very different from mine.  But one thing we had in common-- neither of us could bear to turn down the parade of panhandlers.  The stories-- the props-- people hadn't eaten in weeks, newly-released prisoners, veterans, fathers of handicapped children-- a woman with a lump on her face that looked like she'd sewn a golf ball into her  cheek--she needed $7,000 to have it removed and she was a mere $1,200 from her goal.  I have often to remind myself that these people are choosing to be beggars… and feel more sympathy for the couples kissing and separating at the train station-- for my friend whose business partner was getting on a plane after a casual goodbye, even though they'd been lovers and her heart was no doubt breaking a little.  I thought about another friend who refuses to hear about illness, funerals-- he seems so hard, so insulated and unfeeling-- but maybe he is stretched so thin, is so brittle, so fragile, that anything will set him off, and he must step over the criers and avoid the beggars to keep himself from melting.

When I was growing up, we had a black housekeeper.  She came most days to clean, to do laundry.  She was generous and large-spirited.  She sang while she worked and brought little packs of M&Ms everyday.  My Mom left her $40 a week underneath the kitchen radio.  She called me funny nicknames and she loved me like one of her children.  I often sneaked downtown to her 'hood where there were no white people… where there was no air conditioning but plenty of shared kool-aid and lemonade.  She sang in her church choir and sang Odetta and Etta and Aretha while she ironed.  The songs made her cry.  When I was older I played her my records and she listened and we sang along, together.  She knew what was good, and she knew exactly who she was and where she was going.  I trusted her; In a way I loved her more than my own mother.  She was safe, she was strong, she was pure and clear and had answers.  I followed her to church a few times-- the only white face in the congregation, and she introduced me as her child.  People sang and cried and testified.  She played me my first B. B. King record, and it was like musical crying.  The Blues, she explained.  I couldn't really grasp it-- blue was a color,  it was black people's music (she called herself a Negro).  But it was so good.

I often feel that my sense of being loved and accepted as a child was born in that church; that somehow the music was the blood and the mortar and the glue.  My family was too emotionally tangled to be able to let go-- they were figuring out how to be a family, but seemed always to be reading someone else's instructions.  I shared this with my niece, who is too preoccupied with her issues to really listen.  I thought it might help because really, we grow up and find that what we need is out in the world, and what we need to become is outside our little fucked-up family circle-- even when they resent and hate you for this… and the antidote is not in substances or a bottle or pharmaceutical, or psychiatric-- but in whatever we embrace and become.

When I got home I learned B.B. King had passed away, maybe even while I was walking and listening and counting the criers, and hearing that first vinyl in my head….'When I wake up Early in the morning /Blues and Troubles all around my bed'... and the sound of that guitar like nothing I had ever heard before then, and him calling someone Baby, with the record noise.  Young B.B. with his pompadour on the record cover, 'wondering what is gonna become of me'…

And what 'becomes' is that all these people have passed-- my housekeeper, the singers in her church-- Odetta, B.B. and the rest.  But what a rich life they had, some of them, with their sorrows and blues and rough nights.  The criers on the street and in their rooms must remember that their end comes all too soon, and growing up and leaving is painful. We all weep and mourn in our own way-- we are all criers-- but more important, we must try to reach out and listen and live, and leave when we must, and love the ones we're with, but not too much... and care, but not too much… and get up and start walking some days when we're not sure where we're going-- just walk out that door and see, really see the landmarks on the way, and brush ourselves off and sing.

9/11 (The Fireman's Lover)

I suppose 10 years ago this date was unimaginable. We had just settled into the Y2k thing and the day was so hopefully crisp and clear. We’d had a false alarm in our building that summer and one of the cute 30-something firemen left me a cute note and came back out-of-uniform to inspect my apartment. September 10 he’d shown up at my gig (he loved music) and, well, I’d suspected he was married— but my friend didn’t seem to care. They spent the night. He left her early-morning; she called, he called... then we both went to bed, at dawn— slept through the burning towers, awoke and watched the horror over and over, not in real time. Neither of us ever heard from him again. We didn’t know his last name.

Of course everyone in New York City had some connection--- but mine, aside from my cute fireman and the geography, was much like the rest of the world-- emotional. The democratic rug had been yanked beneath us and America lost its virginity. My son couldn’t manage to process the victims and the jumpers. We went down to the site and inhaled human and non-human remains. People wanted to die.

My friend and I searched all the images for our fireman. We mourned him--- she more deeply than I. I kept the note. Maybe his family is among the celebrated mourners today--- his sons are undoubtedly strong and athletic; his wife has maybe re-married. He was a good boy with maybe a 7-year-itch. He loved the music. I’m no longer in touch with my friend. She stalked firehouses and events for a while, seeking a replacement. She was among the single women in New York who watched Sex in the City and empathized with women who lost their husbands but pitied herself for NOT having anyone to have missed. For all I know (and pray, with all my heart) our fireman is just fine—he would be 40-something and the trauma of 9/11 cured his itch.

For some of us New Yorkers, we hate what our culture has become. We hate the technology, the slickness that is Manhattan now. The new monuments and towers may satisfy some, but personally I would want a cemetery and private grave where I could lay my face on the dirt or stone and weep. I’m sure some of the families have taken that option, in a quiet way.

There are also, this being New York, the scams and fakes-- -the insurance payments that went to the wrong survivors, the drama queens who moaned and beat their breasts for loved ones that hated them, that rarely spoke— messy divorces unconcluded on 9/11— cheater boyfriends who suddenly spoke on podiums and seduced sympathetic beautiful women who would never have given them a look. I remember meeting a man— he asked me out shortly afterward--- spent an entire dinner explaining how he’d lost his soulmate on 9/11, how she’d been a concert pianist but they’d lived in a studio apartment and she worked at an insurance firm--- he kept touching my knee under the table until I stood up and asked him if he loved her so much, and since he accepted the 1 million dollar payment he had to hire a lawyer to get, why he kept her in a tiny apartment with no piano. It was mean, but it was my personal tribute to her.

Not a single one of the victims has grown cold in their grave. Anniversaries--- like holidays--- give us a window. I used to believe Christmas was the day that Jesus just might show up. Only Christmas. September 11 is the day on which we think--- God, just those years ago... at 7 AM... everything was as it was. The way on September 11, 2001 the disbelief made us keep rewinding--- last night at this time we were here, having dinner, watching television... the look-back thing... if we could only return--- we remember, we mark another anniversary, we are forced to accept that an eyeblink removes us from the moment, and the door has closed forever-- -time will stop for no man, no tragedy... there is only ‘that side’—before... and ‘this side’—after. The date just reminds us painfully of the ‘After’. All the rest is lost, gone, permanent.

I am tired of the endless replays of a moment which doesn’t ever seem to lose its edge, a gun that shoots endless bullets, a horror scene that never dilutes. The commercials--- now it is Eva Mendes, not Eva Longoria---promoting their hair product....but the documentaries are the same. No one wants to see anything but the vintage actual footage. We have learned little, our economy and lives have been drastically altered, America is no longer even worth being a target for terrorism. We have bad dreams, we wake up. For some of us life is still a bad dream.

I don’t know if I could have accepted the murder of a husband or child. I find these things so hard. One of the fathers I knew who lost his son – died on September 18, 2001. He died of grief. His wife mourns both of them by living.

Some days I wish I’d slept with the fireman. It would have personalized the whole thing— I could have felt more justified as a woman to grieve, even though there would have been no pew for me at the funeral ceremonies. I’ve heard my former friend has become an eccentric republican and hoards cats.

People are watching television. People are playing music. People are making love and conceiving children. People are dying and not getting hero’s funerals. Dying and suiciding and overdosing on prescription pills. People are getting married and flying and betting on football. Robbing buildings, raping and mugging old people, putting out fires.

At my son’s school there are 2 model towers and students hang a chain on them; the number of links you choose represents the degrees of separation from a victim. Our chains are getting longer. The years are each a link— for those closest, the days and minutes are a link. The distance is a painful ocean of links from lying beside your child, your husband, your lover--- a galaxy of never-ever. The memory, as this day reminds, has zero links. It doesn't recall or commemorate or 'remain'. It is.