Thoughts As The Temperature Enters Free Fall

2-15-2023

I first wrote this a couple of weeks back when the free fall was imminent. What's currently imminent is my back operation. Finally. If you are reading this, I'm either in the operating room or recovery. I'm publishing this now because Sunday morning is out, and I cannot promise the following Sunday because I don't know what recovery will be like. My instructions from a couple of folks who have done this: Don't be brave. Take the pain medicine. All of it. As for the following weather report: it's terse, and a bit unsettling. 

February 3, 2023

It's so quiet. It settles so softly yet so urgently this quiet. We are at six degrees above zero heading to minus thirty degrees (wind chill) over the next twenty-four. So quiet. So still. Frigid air settles over the land like parachute cloth. Everything snaps or can snap. Apprehension is the watchword, an anxiety rarely brought on by living like we do. Will half a tank of oil be enough? Will the power go out? Will the pipes freeze? Will we? Jamie is upstairs currently wrapped in an electric blanket, but if the power goes out? I brought in three extra armloads of wood this morning to keep from running outside for more during the coldest stretch. We won't freeze, but damage could occur. The county emergency commission called each resident to warn them of the pitfalls. Stay inside. When the seasons change, when the snows fall, when the rains pound and thunder there is awe and wonder and maybe a soupcon of worry that the roof could leak, but there is no fear. The weather we have now births fear. It's like more and even greater weight continues to press down upon you. There is little escape. It presses down and down. Both hands. Is this what it's like in a desert heat wave? I was once in weather in excess of 120 degrees with no shade, and it felt like this - dangerous - like walking point on patrol, like being pressed under a hot rock, a human panini.

Normally, the drama of the weather fascinates me. I don't watch the weather channel, but I do stick my head out the window a lot, not to mention time spent daydreaming on the bridge, weather permitting. However, this stuff going on outside my house right now gives me pause. Jamie calls downstairs on the walkie-talkie to me in my office, "Minus twenty degrees." I don't want it to linger. I want it to go away. I think of being squeezed by a gigantic python thick around as a truck tire. I went outside to latch the porch door against the growing wind, took off my glove to do so, and my fingers damn near went numb before I got back to the house.  Looking at minus thirty degrees. We're prepared for a black out - lanterns within reach, lots of firewood, extra water, quilts, bread'n'butter - but still it won't be pleasant, and it won't be exciting. It ain't Ukraine, and it ain't Turkey, and it ain't Syria, but it is a notch on the survival pole that I can do without.

Further Annals, Etc. - Ms. Agnes and Lorelei

Her breasts were so big they came atcha like an an eighteen wheeler with the high beams on. The other one's smile was like an abandoned highway. One lived in a Beverly Hills penthouse apartment, the other on the streets of that same city. One drove a Mercedes. The other carried a throw rug with her wherever she went so wherever she was she could simply plop it down and say, "I'm home." As for the penthouse, it wasn't really a penthouse but it was the top floor of a fifties, four story, stucco apartment building, and so the developer called it the penthouse, actually, the penthouse suite. 

It was an interesting period of time. Thanks to a Hollywood career that had more craters than the moon, I was again plying the raw streets as a social worker. This time my constituents were the male and female denizens of halfway houses before going on with the next phase of their lives, if they had one - the homeless, addicts, alcoholics, parolees, ex cons. That same period of time I was also hiring out as a writing coach to folks who could afford my rates, which is how the one I shall call Lorelei from Beverly Hills came into my life. One summer. Two women. One's name I can't remember. One's name I can't use. So. Ms. Agnes and Lorelei shall they be.

Lorelei had been a centerfold in a national magazine who now worked for that same magazine meeting potential centerfolds and welcoming them into the "family", making certain they were met at the airport and escorted through the motions, sure they were both cared for and safe. Lorelei had had a tumultuous and very public affair with a very famous actor, absolutely, positively the love of her life. He was a known curmudgeon and womanizer, but what they had was so special the world should know. Or so she fancied the world should know. She wanted to show what it was like when they were together, just the two of them, away from the spotlight. Oh, how lovable he could be! Not like in the trades. So beautiful. So beautiful. Perfect for the screenplay she was bursting to write, asked around, and hired me to help her write it. So, for a period of weeks, we worked together daily, in the penthouse suite, and, in the evening, I'd go see Ms. Agnes who'd just come in off the street.

I met Ms. Agnes when she was coaxed in by another worker. She had managed to acquire a small propane heater to ward off chilly nights, but it had been stolen earlier that day by some guy who punched her in the face, grabbed the heater, and ran. She could not remember whether she had spent the night with him, but he cold-cocked her hard when she looked the other way and scuttled off. "People ain't mean," she said, "But livin' like make 'em cruel to the point of death."

Lorelei augmented her income as a model in various states and stages of dress and undress. Even now, twenty years later, those breasts continue to amaze me. Kind of like a singular statistic, you know, like the tongue of the blue whale weighs six tons. Can you believe it? The tongue alone weighs six tons! She wouldn't tell me her age, of course. She was in her forties, I'm sure, but lookin' very very fine regardless of two score plus. And maybe plus again. I'm not sure, but the photographic range was astonishing from coy to near porno. Oddly, her sexuality was not on display when she wasn't modelling. It was like being in the room with a sculpture by Michaelangelo, the David, for instance - awesome but you don't touch it. It doesn't even invite you to touch it. Yet, it's naked. What it does: It says, "Stand back. Breathe. Just take it in." 

She amazed me, Ms. Agnes did. She actually missed the street and intended to go back out. While we spoke she packed and unpacked her worldly goods on a decrepit baby carriage she pushed in front of her. 

"Room ain't safe." She tried to explain. 

"The street's safe?" I asked.

"Safer."

"But you were punched and robbed out there!"  She shrugged. 

"People livin' home get punched, too. They don't? I don't read the papers? What inside a damn room gonna do for me? I still got to hustle lunch.  A job? Me? What I know how to do and who's gonna hire me and why do I want to work for 'em anyway? For a 'partment where the door ain't lock and the landlord ain't do shit? Don't need no Goddamn landlord. I got my rug."

 "What about when it rains?", I asked. 

"I get wet." 

"What about sick?" 

"Coroner know where I am."

A few months after working with both these women I left Los Angeles for good and settled on a creek in a valley in the Catskill Mountains. Decades later, from this vantage point, I am astonished at the parade of so many fascinating characters throughout my life. As a young teen I remember standing on the street corner in downtown Baltimore checking out all the passersby, making up stories about them, finishing their conversations. I'm still at it. My mother used to say, "You got a mouth? Use it." The key is to know when not to use it. One of my pleasures has been the ability to talk to anybody. Forget attitude. Just listen. I worked in the White House knee to knee with a sitting President of the United States, and I've talked with a bushman around a campfire in the jungle. The key? Get them to talk about themselves. I don't need to tell them what I know. I already know it. I need for them to tell me what they know. Whatcha got cookin' interests me a lot more than what I've got cookin'. I tend to over cook, anyway.

Even Further Annals of a Social Worker

I first wrote about my stint as a social worker a few blogs back. Folks wanted more. Here's more. 

After graduating from Morgan State College (now, University), I went to work for the Baltimore City Department of Public Welfare, Childrens Division, Emergency Care Squad. There were only five of us for the entire city. When a child was reported in difficult straits, abandoned, neglected, brutalized, or otherwise abused, one of us would be called to ensure the child's safety. Most of my clientele were Black, but two families come to mind who weren't: Miz Homewood's and the DeCosmo kids.

Miz Homewood was a thief with three sons. She'd been intimate with all three and taught them well.  When she came into my life, her two oldest were serving prison terms for breaking and entering, and her youngest might as well have been. He was in reform school, now due for release, so, since he was still a minor, I went to the mother's apartment to do a quick home study. There was no place else for him to go except for foster care which, it turned out, was better than going back to mama or the street. But, this was an official visit and had to be done to keep things official. 

Her apartment was the second floor of a small brick building that should have been boarded up, originally built to house slaves, a fact that caused her a fair amount of grief. She was immediately on me to find her some place else where "they ain't". "I don't want my boy raised like this," she told me, completely oblivious to the irony. As low as she was, she needed to know someone else was even lower. Lyndon Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Emptying pockets was Miz Homewood's specialty: yours, mine, hers...

Miz Homewood, native daughter of West Virginia or Tennessee or someplace like that, called herself a back porch Baptist because she loved the Lord but loved to sing and dance and sip her whiskey, too. "It don't hurt none to frolic." Wasn't gonna give neither up. She also had no teeth, not an incisor, not one molar, stumps maybe. I never wanted a closer look, and all she wore was a ratty, chenille bath robe. She assured me, "I'm gonna f*** you 'fore we're through." I assured her she wasn't, although I remember motoring down the hall to get away from her which wasn't easy given that back then suit, tie, and cordovan brogans were normal attire, even on the mean, hot, Summer streets of southwest Baltimore. Nothing Nike about it, but I did leave her cackling in my wake. 

That's not the worst part. The worst part follows.

While her youngest was in reform school he left the care of his prized flock of homing pigeons to his mother. I didn't see any. Where were they? She beckoned me into the kitchen where she opened the oven door to reveal a number of baked birds, stomach side up, little claws reaching for the sky. She didn't say anything, but her gummy jaws moved back and forth. I'm sure I recommended foster care, although what ultimately happened to her son I can only guess, as is the case with all my clients. I wonder what happened to them? Did any of them escape? Did he? Have I passed him on the street and not known it?

                                        ************************************

The DeCosmo kids (there were three of them - Karen, eight, the oldest, a younger sister and still younger brother) came into my care when child services was called to a rundown apartment where these three children seemed to be waiting patiently for someone to pick them up. They had been bathed and dressed well, their nicest clothes, hair fixed and combed, plus there was enough food to last them the day plus an extra large box of Rice Krispies, their favorite cereal. It was a Hail, Mary play by the parents who could not find work and had no money, so desperate and incapable they concocted this scheme to park the kids as safely as they could, report their whereabouts as abandoned children to the police (who would then call in child services), and drive off to find employment while living in their car. These were not ragamuffins but cared for little creatures who could no longer be cared for. I was an emergency care worker, and here they were. We were immediately drawn to each other. 

Even after all these years I wonder at their comportment? All three remained calm and agreeable, and I could already see the oldest, consciously or not, assuming the role of Older Sister, fixing her little sister's dress, brushing back her baby brother's hair. What had their actual family life been like? All of them had reddish hair and freckles. They did not want to be separated, so I needed to find a home that would take all three, preferably on a continuing basis. I managed to find one, and, once they were officially in that home, my job was officially over. I'd provided emergency care, and others would take over from here. I was supposed to let go, but this is one of the few times I didn't. I wanted to be a staple for them as long as I could and so visited them periodically, stayed in their lives awhile. I don't remember how it came about but the three of them were transferred to a convent, so I no longer had access to them. Then the time came for me to move on. 

Morgan State had been my saving grace. They accepted me provisionally when I'd run out of other options and my life had ground to a screeching halt. I'd failed so many times - high school as well as college - I had nowhere else to turn. But, Morgan was there. Morgan accepted me. I wrote my first play at Morgan. Morgan jump started my life. I graduated magna cum laude and was accepted to Yale for grad school. Yale? Me? That's right. Yale! Given my pathetic academic history, how could I turn Yale down? I couldn't. Being a social worker was and remains the best gig I've ever had. It was a tough choice, but I had to make it. I would need to say goodbye.

I thought of the DeCosmo kids, wondered, again, what would happen to them, wanted again to see them so literally went and knocked on that convent's formidable front door.

The door was so thick I marveled that the knock even went through when suddenly it flew open and there stood a force so potent it pushed me back. A nun in full regalia glaring at me as if I were sin incarnate or a turd on the hem of her habit. How dare I knock on this holy timber! Who are you? What do you want? What I wanted was to see the DeCosmo kids one more time, to thank them for the delight they brought into my life - Some day I will be a father - how they'd helped to soften my days with their smiles - And this is what that will be like. 

Sister probably shouldn't have relented, but she did, and I spent the next hour chatting with the DeCosmo kids about this 'n' that. A sister may have overseen us, but I have no memory of that. There was still no word from the mom and dad, but those kids were quite resolute in believing their parents were coming back for them. Yes, the sisters were very nice, and there was plenty of food. They had Rice Krispies. You did have to chip in and help at table, though. This is school, too.

I heard from an ex co-worker a couple of months later that the parents had come back and collected them. Word was there were jobs and a home in a neighboring state. There was no word of charges brought.

Nearly sixty years have passed, and I still have their school size photos on my bulletin board.

TOEHOLD - Where SweetAss Sue Came From In The First Place

SweetAss Sue is a character from my first novel, Toehold, published by Simon and Schuster. The response to her story was overwhelming, as is your response to this blog. Thank you. 

From the jacket:

"The residents of Toehold, Alaska, are an odd collection of eccentric souls reveling in the fierceness of the land and determined to live on their own terms. All of them have stories, some ridiculous, some bordering on the Homeric...Six-foot-three-inch Sweet-ass Sue runs the town's only bar...Summer Joe, a native american Athapaskan, has a weakness for Jewish social workers...And Mary Ellen Madden, known as Mel to her friends, a cash-strapped, fast talking vagabond with gray-green eyes and a double-wide smile who's trying to make it as a hunting guide...Funny and romantic, with a cast of unforgettable characters, Toehold is at once a laugh-out-loud comedy, a quirky love story, and a sublime evocation of the beautiful, rugged wilderness of Alaska."

What follows is another excerpt from Toehold:

Fall is like a big old dog you've had for a million years. Everyday you look forward to seeing him, and every day you feel the pull of his passing. Joy and sadness; equal measures. He is still robust with a shiny coat thickened for Winter, but his eyes have become cloudy, and now he groans when he lies down. He still chases rabbits through the field with an abundance of enthusiasm, but the joy of watching him is tempered by realizing he is one step slower than he was yesterday. He is beautiful, and he will die. Terrible joy; exquisite sadness; equal measures.

How 'bout this bright idea, folks, if you like the excerpt, buy the book! Paperback. New. Used. It's available.

Bookshop.org is a recommended marketplace as is Barnes & Noble, and there's always Amazon as well as your local independent bookstore - my preference.

So, folks, do me a favor. TOEHOLD. Buy the book! In fact, how 'bout this even brighter idea: buy all three of my books: Toehold, Watching Gideon (Simon & Schuster), and Journey (Skyhorse Press). I can't think of a better way for me to spend your money.

How Sweet Ass Sue Got Her Name

An Excerpt    

    Sweet-ass Sue weighed eighteen pounds six ounces at birth, larger than a polar bear cub. Her mother complained throughout her entire pregnancy that she felt like she was carrying a cow. Sue was a full blood Athapaskan Indian with a frame like a refrigerator – big, very big, but solid. She was not Walmart Fat, not fat one bit, just huge. If she had on a football helmet you’d mistake her for a nose tackle. She always wore her raven black hair in two long braids hanging down her back topped with a purple headband. People tend to believe, when somebody’s so big, that deep down inside they’re really just a pussycat. Sweet-ass Sue gave the living lie to such bullroar. She had a heart, but you’d have to dig halfway to Siberia to find it. People knew one thing about her for sure: they didn’t want Sweet-ass as an enemy. They weren’t totally sure they wanted her as a friend, either.


Sue was in her forties, so she just missed out on the time when female athletes were coming into their own. Even so she would have had a tough go of it because her sport of choice was football. So often Sue wished she had been born a boy, not because she wanted to sleep with other girls (which she certainly did not, high school gossip to the contrary) but because she wanted to compete in a man’s game at a man’s level. She considered it a cosmic misfortune that she had been super-sized at birth but handed the sex of a woman. By the time she was sixteen she was six feet three inches tall, weighed two hundred and fifty pounds with the sleek, muscular haunches of a draft horse, and she could bench press three hundred. So, Sue decided to right a cosmic wrong and go out for the football team. She was bigger than any of the guys except for the star defensive end who had her by a hair. Still, the coach dug in and said no way. She was a girl; she’d get clobbered; he didn’t want to be responsible for child abuse.

“Why not take up soccer?” he said. Sue pointed out that their school had no soccer team to which the coach threw up his hands and insisted, “No can do.” Then he pulled his sweat pants out of the crack of his ass, took a sip of his diet Pepsi, and said, “Excuse me. I got practice.” Sue never had been one to take no for an answer, she decided this called for drastic measures. How to prove that she had the stuff to play football?  When she finally thought of a way, she knew somebody was going to get hurt, but she didn’t think it’d be her. Whatever. Sue was willing to take that chance. Guts for days! 

“Stop thinking,” she said to herself. “Get to it.”

And she did.

At lunch the next period, in the cafeteria in front of the entire school, she knocked the tray out of the defensive end’s hands and told him to watch where the fuck he was going. He didn’t know what to do.

“Are you gonna apologize or what?” she demanded.

“You bumped into me,” he retorted.

“You calling me a liar?” She went right up in his face. Then she pushed him.

“You better cut this shit out,” he threatened.

“Why? You gonna hit me?” she said.

“You’re a girl, goddamnit,” he squealed totally confused about what the hell was going on here.

“I think you’re a pussy,” she replied.

“What the hell are you?” he said.

“You calling me a pussy? Huh? You insulting my sex? Huh?”

He was completely bewildered, and then she smacked him across the face. “Does that feel like pussy, asshole?” she taunted. “Does it?”

“Let her have it,” shouted one of his teammates. “She’s asking for it.”

“Yeah, kick her ass,” yelled somebody else.

“He can’t,” Sue yelled back. “He’s afraid of a girl. He ain’t nothing but pussy himself.”

At that, the poor kid lost it and punched Sue so hard she fell backwards into a table. The rest of the students expected to see blood and tears. What they got instead was a smile on Sue’s face. “Is that your best shot?” she wanted to know. “You didn’t kill me with it, and you’re going to remember that mistake for the rest of your life,” at which point she charged head first, speared him in the belly, and landed two hard shots to each side of his jaw before he hit the floor. Later, in the nurse’s office, he didn’t remember anything after she came at him. The school still refused to let her play football. In fact, the administration refused to let her continue as a student. They kicked her out and wouldn’t let her back in the door. Not that she gave a shit. As soon as she came of age, Sue joined the Coast Guard and struck out for what she hoped would be more interesting than watching TV and chewing whale blubber.

It was there that she got her nickname and met the love of her life.

***

The Coast Guard wasn’t as interesting as she thought it might be. Sue found herself wishing she had joined another branch of the service, the Navy or Air Force, so at least she could have gone some place exotic. Her first tour of duty was in the Aleutian Islands which, as far as she was concerned, was a serious dearth of imagination on the part of the bonehead who made the decision to deploy her there. Stationing an Alaskan Indian in the Aleutian Islands. Come on! Where’s the brains in that? So, Sue put in for a transfer to Key West because she heard it was a happenin’ town, only she got shipped to Mobile Bay off Alabama instead. Shore duty. Perfect. A six foot three inch woman of color in the redneck capital of the world. Sue was in a world of misery. She thought of going AWOL, someplace in the Arctic that didn’t have a name. How would they ever find her? She decided they wouldn’t and was damn close to taking off when a chunk of pure, unadulterated happiness came her way. 

Each day when she got off work Sue would head for the gym where she’d bench press herself into near catatonia. Then she’d go outside to the track and run for miles. After all that, it didn’t matter to her where she was. She’d sleep until reveille the next morning. One day, after her workout, she climbed into the stands on the side of the track to stretch her tired legs out in the late day sun. Hey, now! What…was…that? Hercules in a sweat suit? Oh…my…God. There, walking into the center of the infield, was the biggest guy Sue had ever seen. Taller than she was. Heavier by seventy pounds at least. Bulked. Ripped. Gorgeous, so gorgeous she had to turn her head away. You don’t stare at an eclipse of the sun. And he was a man of color though she couldn’t tell his country of origin. All she knew was that in about three seconds she wanted to go there. With him. Now. That very instant.

She watched as he took off his sweat suit and stood there in shorts and t-shirt. He made Mr. Universe look like a famine victim. Was he even real? Was he some kind of special effect? He leaned over, unzipped a royal blue, ballistic cloth bag he had carried onto the field with him, and took out a steel ball the size of a cantaloupe. She watched mesmerized as he hoisted the shot in one hand to his right shoulder, drew a half-circle in the dirt with the left toe of his Adidas, tucked the shot next to his chin, held his left arm straight out and up from his shoulder, whirled his massive body like the Tazmanian devil, and launched the shot. It sailed like a cannon ball fired from a frigate. My God, the torque in that man’s body! The graceful immensity of it all. Sue watched him work out all the rest of that afternoon and the next, never failing to marvel that such bulk could move like liquid.

*** 

The closest thing Sue had heard thus far in the way of sexual endearment was that fucking her was like hanging onto the steering wheel of a runaway eighteen-wheeler on a steep downhill grade with no seat belt. Men did not whisper sweet nothings in her ear. They begged for mercy. Ultimately, as far as Sue was concerned, they were a bunch of little itty-bitty things, not worth the time or effort. If she had lived in Japan she would have hung out with Sumo wrestlers, but it seemed she wasn’t going to get any further than Mobile. OK, she was tough; she could live without it…until the day the man who put the shot walked onto that field. She lost her breath; her heart crumbled like a cookie; her legs went weak. On the third day he walked over to her and said, “Hi, sexy.” By the time those three syllables crossed his lips she belonged to him heart, soul, and all the good parts in between. 

He was a full-blooded South Sea Islander, a Samoan, which accounted for his size. She didn’t know it, yet, but her lover to be was hung like a whale. Once they were intimate, which was two steaks and six beers after they met, she took to calling him “Moby Dick,” and he took to whispering “Sweet Ass” in her ear. When they coupled from behind he said her ass looked like a big, beefy heart. He’d explode into her like a broke loose fire hydrant which set off a chain reaction of orgasms that put them both onto a new planet. When he came he’d kiss her hard on the spot where her ass met her spine, then he’d whoop and cry out, “Oh, Lord, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” His name was Manny, and he was the love of Sue’s life. They became inseparable, like a brace of matched Percherons in a field with no fence.

 *** 

Manny was the type of man who always went for the gold, no matter what he did. The thing about the shotput was that he intended to compete in the Olympics, intended to break the record and make his name, then open a gym and eventually a chain of gyms in southern California. He and Sue would be equal partners. Maybe they’d call their place “In the Buff” or “Buff It Out.” They discarded the names “Gym Dandy,” “Butt Factory,” and “Venus Envy,” though Sue kind of giggled with the idea of calling it “Moby Dick’s,” maybe have a logo of a giant sperm whale on their business cards, but Manny wanted to keep that moniker just their little secret, well, maybe not so little but only theirs nonetheless. He truly was a sweetheart, her sweetheart. “Old Faithful” she sometimes called him for a change of pace.

 *** 

The thing about sudden death is: it’s so sudden. One instant the person is there, and the next nanosecond he isn’t. There’s the body. It’s still warm. There’s sweat on the brow. The person still holds whatever it was he was holding when he died unless it rolled from his hand in which case the object was still there, was just that second held in his hand which still has the shape of the thing. Maybe the eyes remain open, but they don’t see you anymore, those eyes that were always filled with you. Where did the person go so quickly? Why did they leave their loved one so empty, so scared, so desperate, so all in an instant so achingly alone?

*** 

Even though she adored him, Sue was not the type of woman to always sit in the stands and watch her man do his thing. Manny sensed this (and, if he hadn’t, she would have eventually told him), and one day at practice he strolled over to where she sat and said, “Come on, doll, I’ll show you how.” He was having a little difficulty catching his breath, but he’d really been working out hard. The trials were coming up, and Manny intended to intimidate the competition from the first toss. He’d been beating the record all week long in practice, and he was ready for war. 

They walked side by side to the throwing circle, bumping hips as they went, playing around. He picked up the sixteen pound shot and was showing her how to hold it when, seemingly out of the blue, he said, “Sue?” 

“What, babe?” she answered.

He fell to the ground beside her and was dead by the time she knelt down. The autopsy showed that his heart was simply too small for his body. It was congenital, was always only a matter of time. Who knew?  For Sue, the love of her life had come and gone. The rest was just marking time.

Sue’s was a big-shouldered grief. Everybody thought she was really tough about it, but Sue knew that if she uttered even a single syllable she’d cut loose a black hole of Hell and sorrow. She’d swallow herself up. Grief kept her moving like a vagrant hopping freight trains. It took her to the end of the world but not beyond, for her sense of ultimate survival was as big as the rest of her. It stepped in at the right time. She stopped at the edge and settled. If ever there was a place with a chance that somebody big as Sue might pass through, that place was Alaska. She thought, “Some time or other you’ve got to take a stand, and where does matter”. 

            

A NEW YORK MINUTE

Like a slice of hot pizza at four a.m., some things can only happen in this city.

Some summer afternoon, some years ago, I was churning along 42nd street to meet an old chum for a drink. When I stopped at a corner for a red light a young Black man approached with a batch of CD’s he’d obviously recorded himself, a budding musician hustling best he could. 

“Great riffs,” he said to me. “Cheap. You got to get one.”

“No, thanks,”I said, fingers crossed I even had the coins in pocket for a Bloody Mary, “But my son’s a musician, so I know how tough it is. Mazel tov,” and started across the street. He followed me.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“What’s what?”

“That tov stuff.”

“Mazel tov?”

“Yeah. That.”

At this point, a passerby, a woman in an overcoat who could have been a librarian but a tough one, says to the kid, “You live in New York City, and you don’t know what mazel tov is?” The kid looked dumbfounded. "It means Good luck,” she said.

                "Good luck," I said."Mazel tov."

“Yeah. Mazel tov,” the young man said. His smile was brighter than the traffic light.

The librarian kept on walking, didn’t miss a step. Me? It was a moment Allen Ginsberg would have been happy to claim - an angel headed hipster moment. I wanted my life to be a collection of those moments, jewels wrapped in black velvet, to be unwrapped from time to time, spread out and savored as the gifts they are intended to be.

Ham, Latkes, and Black-eyed Peas

NB: Please forgive the formatting. If the spacing is awkward, it's because I could not justify it. I hope it's readable.

We couldn't celebrate the holidays at their traditional times (including my birthday) because all of us
were so sick and/or scattered, so Chanukah and Christmas came to the Donnelly/Foreman household one
week late this year. They came with more than their usual gusto because they were all crammed into the
single day we were all finally able to get it together. Lock'n'Load: Judah Maccabee and the three wise
men; a star in the East and one day's oil in the pot; a newborn in a crib of straw and a menorah brought from Russia by a Bubbe as a young woman. Tradition!

 

Then came dinner: 

Baked ham basted with a neighbor's maple syrup by an Irish Catholic with dancing green eyes partnering with this neurotic Russian who needs to taste everything in a crowded kitchen first, and potato latkes made by another neighbor - her card read, "Less Tzorris, More Nachas" - with a surprise side of black-eyed peas (a new year's tradition in the south) dropped off by yet another neighbor - "Happiness, Y'all!" - both of these women vying , and righteously so, for the title of World's Best Cook. Talk about an ecumenical experience - outdone - if you can believe it possible - outdone by a homemade chocolate rum birthday cake conjured by that very same latke lady. 

All in all, it was a good year. Hope yours was, too.


Happiest of New Years' to all of you out there

And

Thanks so much for giving me such a good read