These Days by Stephanie

There was a small and rugged stationery store in the 1960’s on East 84th street where I sometimes went with Mom when she ordered Crane note cards on heavy cream stock engraved with her initials. I remember it well because it was the first time I saw an adult with Down Syndrome walking with his mother. Mom explained the disorder to me, and the statistics surrounding probability of Down Syndrome for a child of an older mother. Mom was always perfunctory in her explanations, a straight shooter with no silver linings even when explaining genetic injustice to a child. In the 1990’s, I interviewed a woman named Elizabeth Goodwin who is the co-founder of the National Down Syndrome Society. Elizabeth’s daughter Carson was born with Down Syndrome in 1979 when Elizabeth was a young woman and the doctors at the tony hospital in Manhattan offered to “disappear” the baby born to a “woman of means” after she was born: Elizabeth was appalled and took her baby home. So much for statistics.
On Saturday, my husband and I went shopping for new dishes in SoHo, the area of New York City so named because it is south of Houston Street, and one which roughly thirty years ago was a part of town known better as The Bowery where one ventured for industrial supplies, a hot pastrami sandwich at Katz’s delicatessen, or simply passed through to get to another part of town. My Dad took us to Katz’s on occasion, driving his black Cadillac Brougham through the narrow streets, and locking the doors to ward off the “Bowery bums” who staggered with bottles of liquor in paper bags and knocked on the car windows asking for change. The area is lofty now, dotted with high-end Mall-type stores and cafes. I was standing in front of Crate and Barrel when I saw the young man with Down Syndrome standing on the corner, flapping his arms hopelessly, and pacing.  I stopped and turned just as two men stopped and turned. “He’s calling for his mother, right?” we said to one another. “He’s lost, right?” Strength in numbers with certainty, we approached him, “Can we help you?”
“I lost my mother,” he said with the desperation of a small child. “Went to a store. She’s gone.”
He wore burgundy sweat pants, a black turtle neck under a black down jacket, white sneakers that seemed too tight around his feet, and his hands were so dirty it appeared he hadn’t bathed in days. Yet,  he was clean-shaven, his hair was cut, his ears were clean. He was not unattended, yet the mustard-green fanny pack worn across his belly was empty: no wallet, no identification, no keys – nothing to give us any indication as to where he lived or who he was. He merely knew his name: Enrique.
“What’s your mother’s name?” we asked.
“Mommy,” he said. “I lost her.”
I called 911 and explained the situation while Aidan and Andy attempted to calm Enrique and keep him from running off in search. I gave him tissues to wipe his eyes ( he groaned that they  were “filled with water”)  and I wondered if he was crying or the wind caused his eyes to tear. We assured him that his mother would come soon, afraid to mention “the police,” not knowing how he might react to authority. Ten long minutes later, an NYPD cruiser came by, and Andy ran up to their window. They were not the ones who received the call. This wasn’t their jurisdiction, they explained. As they pulled away, Enrique (clearly spooked by the patrol car) sprinted into oncoming traffic on Broadway. Andy took chase, stopping cars with his hands as they came just shy of him and Enrique with screeching halts. It was like a Hollywood chase scene. And yet the passersby kept walking. Just another day on Broadway.
A good fifteen minutes later, with Andy and Enrique now out of sight, another blue and white cruiser came with red lights flashing. Aidan and I explained that Enrique took off with Andy in pursuit; Aidan had Andy on his cell phone and now they were a good six blocks away with Andy, breathless, still running after Enrique who ran like “greased lightning.” Aidan and I were also breathless, explaining what happened, describing Enrique, saying that we weren’t certain if a mother really even existed but clearly Enrique was desperate, maybe homeless, maybe truly lost from a mother, a group, just in general. The bottom line was that he needed help.
“When you called 911, we thought he was your lost child,” the police said with the emphases on “you” and “child.”
If you thought I lost my child, why did it take you twenty minutes to get here (at which point a kidnapper could have already absconded into the anonymity of Manhattan)? Doesn’t a man with Down Syndrome who is desperately searching for his mother deserve the attention of New York’s Finest as much as anyone else? The interrogating officer rolled his eyes. Was Enrique (we guessed he was around thirty, maybe even forty)  simply negligible? Disclaimer: There are good cops and bad cops; good doctors and bad doctors; good nurses and bad nurses; good priest and bad priests: but just because people are in the business of dedicating their lives to saving and helping humanity doesn’t mean they’re all “good.”  Sadly, the two police officers who took the call were less than interested in a lost man-child in a land without promise.
The patrol car headed in the direction of Andy and Enrique. Aidan and I shook hands goodbye (and it was only at this point that we introduced ourselves). I went into Crate and Barrel, reluctantly turning over dinner plates and stemware in my hands, feeling helpless and way too entitled. About a half hour later, the dispatcher from 911 called my cell to say that the patrol car’s efforts to locate Enrique turned up empty. Where was I now? Where was my child?  I explained again that he is not my child and not a child altogether, but rather a man with Down Syndrome who lost his mother.
“Oh, well, then there’s nothing else we can do,” they said. “He’s an adult.”
He is and yet he isn’t, I thought. Clearly, further explanation would be futile.
I’ve been thinking about Enrique since Saturday. I wonder if his mother died (an older mother perhaps as my mother had explained to me years before?), and he wandered off not understanding death. Or was his mother searching for him as well? Was anyone looking for him? Would other people hear his cries and tend to him? Would a patrol car find him, take him, at the very least, to a shelter? Would someone determine who he is and where he’s from?
I think about Aidan, Andy and me – seemingly quintessential New Yorkers wearing black on black who became slightly less anonymous to one another for an hour until we, along with Enrique, vanished back into the thin air of New York City.

Yesterday began with deception as my husband and I loaded our car with empty suitcases and his golf clubs still here from our last trip. Our apartment has inadequate space for luggage so we store them elsewhere. We leashed up our eight-year-old cockapoo Walter as well. He was scheduled for dental surgery and the removal of a suspicious growth on his back, so we’d drop him at the vet’s on the way. He jumped up and down, nearly spinning, figuring (I do believe that Walter makes assumptions and suppositions) that we were all traveling to some warm clime. We joked that if Walter owned swim trunks, sun glasses and coconut oil, he’d be packing. When we pulled up to the animal hospital, Walter quaked and once inside, as I handed his leash to the doctor, I swear that Walter looked at me with desperation and accusation, asking how I could have tricked him.
I tried not to watch the clock when I came home. Tried not to picture my eight-year-old dog (who everyone thinks is a puppy) as the intravenous was placed in his hind leg and he was rendered helpless. When the phone rang hours too early, and the caller I.D. read “Vet,” my heart skipped beats. The call was just a progress report to reassure me, but it brought me back to times when the phone rang and my breath caught: When a child’s after-school activity ran overtime because there was an injury; when a teen missed curfew and I sat wringing my hands, and then fast-forward to the days when my mother ailed for five years. When the phone rang with the caller I.D. from her home, I never quite knew what to expect, always anticipated the worst, yet when the inevitable call came that she had “arrested,” I was completely unprepared.
I picked up Walter at the end of the day. His fur was matted, his eyes glassy and unfocused, his nose running, his gait wobbly. I carried him home. He weighs only fourteen pounds, but he was dead weight as he flopped over my shoulder. Was that his heart pounding or mine?
We ordered in sushi last night, and Walter barely let out a “woof” when the delivery man rang the bell. He usually barks relentlessly. Walter slept in his bed while we ate. I gave him a pain killer wrapped in turkey. More deception, I thought. I ate too fast last night, eager to be done with dinner, wanting to just be alone and unearth what was bothering me: I sent a spry little dog to the vet that morning and received a dog that look ten years older. I couldn’t shake the comparison to my mother who’d gone in for a simple procedure seven years ago, and suffered complications. She left for the procedure looking beautiful and elegant. She came home leaning on a walker.
If I’d been able to read the stars last night, they might have told me to check my email, something I did anyway. One of my cousins scanned in old pictures of my mother for me: As a child with her brother, as a young twenty-something in an outfit of high-waisted trousers and floral print blouse, and one of the two of us some twenty years ago at a family reunion. The photos made me happy and sad; emotions crashing into one another at high speed as I wondered how the young girl with thick wavy dark hair (Mom) became the woman with a blond bouffant and a “new” nose because, in her forties, her “old” nose wasn’t the right one for her.
My husband and I were exceptionally tired last night. At least for me, it was the emotional cacophony of the day, coupled with writing, laundry, and post-weekend cleaning – the latter of which is an impossible job in New York City. Wipe the window sills and more soot appears just moments later. Masking city air (that’s rife with diesel) with scents called Ocean Breeze and Fresh Linen is a useless exercise. As tired as I was, I couldn’t fall asleep so I went into the guest room, watched at least three episodes of mysteries, read, wrote and then I heard the tapping of paws and a scraping at the half open door. Walter had staggered down the hall to find me. We lay on the bed together, my hand resting on his back below the incision. I remembered the days of my three babies with night frights, chicken pox, and just plain colds – how I sat with them until we all fell asleep. I remembered my own days as a child when shadows became monsters, and Mom stayed until I fell asleep.
Walter was better this morning, and we took an early morning walk. The sky was gray; the air was damp. The sanitation trucks churned as the men in padded gloves threw in endless wet black bags of garbage. One of them told me that he felt “exuberant,” and I laughed. The masts of the tall ships at the Seaport stood motionless against what is really just a patch of sky over the East River, but vast for Manhattan. But more, I felt a sense of true déjà vu, laden with nostalgia and uncertainty, and yet a sense of something familiar and comforting.
I knew all along last night why I couldn’t fall asleep: Walter was too far away in the “other” room, yet I was reluctant to disturb his slumber and bring him in with me. I was equally reluctant to admit how connected we are. I have learned in the last half dozen years that devotion is dangerous and requires courage. But with my hand on Walter’s back, I fell asleep and dreamed of Mom: We were at a wedding, and as in all my dreams of her, she was elusive and ghost-like. Attachments are unavoidable. Devotion is ever-lasting.

Recently, I recovered from the diaper bag.
Before the babies were born, I carried a small purse containing wallet, comb, lipstick and blush, a few loose tissues and keys. With the first baby came the diaper bag: A vinyl-lined upholstered sack with numerous compartments and quilted “changing pad” filled with so many supplies I put the Red Cross to shame. As the babies became children, the supplies increased. What started with bottles of stored breast milk, water and instant formula, diapers and wipes spiraled with the addition of apple juice, Benadryl liquid, Arrowroot cookies, toy trucks and puzzles, Band-Aids, antiseptic, and changes of clothing. Once the pram and stroller were no longer needed, a form of the diaper bag remained using the deep wells and trunk of my Subaru where one could always find bottles of Gatorade, extra sweaters and sneakers, rain jackets, beach blanket, folding chair, an emergency auto kit, First Aid kit, loose change and cash, and snacks. Children became teens and then the house was filled with supplies – the “extra” refrigerator in the mudroom holding every beverage imaginable (with a sign stating that beers were counted daily and all those under 21 would be prosecuted if the count was down), trays of pasta and microwavable meals. I mean, what if I was still at work and someone was hungry? When we moved to Manhattan and the kids left the nest, it took years not to shop and cook for five. It took years to adjust to the small refrigerator in my typical New York City “railroad” kitchen. No longer the owner of a car, I had to find a substitute where the mentality of always being prepared and never left stranded (perhaps I was a Boy Scout in a past life) prevailed, and so I started carrying a purse the size of, well, the old diaper bag.
I would have fared well on Let’s Make a Deal. Imagine Monty Hall approaching me in the audience and asking if I had a corkscrew in my bag. Got it. How about Epi-pens, Advil, Tylenol, Claritin, Nexium, Tums, Comb, Brush, Paperback, Pen, Paper, Stamps, Band-Aids, Benadryl cream, Neosporin, Distance, Reading and Sunglasses, Cell Phone, Miniature Photo Album of the Now-Grown Kids, Small Umbrella, Mints, Gum, Rolled-Up Shawl, Tissues, Purell, Listerine Strips, Water Bottle, Toothbrush Kit, Flashlight? Check. I was at the ready should anyone, family, stranger, friend, ask for or need an item which (especially in New York City) can be purchased at a number of 24/7 mini-marts or from a street vendor.
I was developing a sort of Quasimodo gait as I navigated the city streets and people on the subway shot me dirty looks as I bumped them with the luggage that hung from my shoulder. Although not one for New Year’s resolutions, I made one privately. I had to let go of all the baggage that was literally weighing me down. I needed to pull up the strangling roots steeped in another era when I was once physically and emotionally responsible for the health and well-being of three other lives – often to the exclusion of my own.
Over the years I developed a reputation as a result of The Bag. Even meeting a friend for dinner typically elicited the statement (for example) of, “Give me a tissue and a Claritin, would you? I didn’t bring my own since I knew you’d have that.” And then my friend would take a gloss from her small, neat bag and coat her lips while I dug into the infinite depths of the heavy monstrosity, so pleased and proud that I could accommodate as I extracted her need.
It happened when my daughter and I shopped at a DSW in the first week of January: On sale for a mere nineteen dollars in gen-u-ine leather, it was a veritable apocalypse. With two exterior pockets for my cell, Metrocard , two credit cards and driver’s license (one does not need their Triple A card when taking the subway, for example), an interior zip pocket for bronzer and the essential Love That Pink lipstick, and room for one pair of glasses, tissues, a small comb, and house keys, I took the plunge. I even left my Epi-Pens at home figuring that if I was so unfortunate to ingest pine nuts or pesto sauce made with pine nuts, a call to 911 would have to suffice. I was riding bareback. It’s glorious, although rather a shock to friends and family who are having a hard time with my change of heart not to mention what they perceive as a radical change of persona. They think I’ve gone mad.
The small bag (and at that price, I wish I had bought three of them in all different colors) is an emblem of freedom. I confess that during the first week of carrying this bag, I felt naked and vulnerable, not to mention irresponsible and negligent. Was I abandoning a family after thirty years of reliability when it came to having every imaginable supply on hand?
Of course, the bag is merely a symbol of feeling unencumbered. There is still that umbilical cell phone: When it rings and the caller I.D. displays the name of one of my kids, my world stops for a moment as I answer, unable to let the call go to voicemail, unable to assume that the “child” can wait, afraid to be absent in case I am needed. I am scolded if I answer and say, “Is everything OK? I really can’t talk right now.” I am told I simply shouldn’t bother to pick up. I think that one day they, too, will carry a diaper bag and it will take decades to break the habit. Perhaps, by then, I will  be on their caller I.D., and they will feel compelled to take my calls because (if I’m lucky) I’ll be old. In the end, I suppose encumbrances remain regardless of how and when we pare down the symbolic baggage. Right now, leaving for the day or an evening with just my own essential needs is strangely liberating.

A few months ago, my daughter Ellie and I were in a Northampton, Massachusetts gallery that sells glass, crafts, and jewelry. Ellie was showing me the wedding band that her fiancé Larry chose: A broad band made of palladium that will endure as Larry hefts Goshen stones to create landscape designs. What Larry makes beautiful defies the expression “you can’t get water from a stone.” As for Ellie, she searched for the perfect band to complement her engagement ring and kept coming up empty. I have worn my grandmother’s wedding band since Mark and I married in 1981. I gave it to Ellie – so fitting since she is my grandmother’s namesake. Since Mom died, I have come to realize the splendor and joy when giving with a warm hand. A local jeweler re-sized the ring for Ellie: Grandma and I, oddly, given the difference in generations, had the same size seven hands and feet. Ellie has my mother’s small-boned hands: The ring was polished, taken down nearly two sizes, and the small diamonds reset. It was perfect.
In the gallery, I spied a ring in a case of “one-of-a-kind jewels.” Set in white gold, it was a flat, natural pearl – its color neither white nor pink, its surface neither smooth nor rough, with a delicate swirl of tiny pave diamonds above and below so the pearl appeared to float. It was something I uncharacteristically desired – having never been one for jewels, let alone rings which I feel draw attention to my “working hands.”
Mom was never a jewelry person either, and never bought anything of value for herself. What she left in her small yet elegant collection are pieces that were either my grandmother’s or bought for her by her husband – most of which, she rarely wore save an “Egyptian head” brooch that is an unidentifiable metal which she bought for herself at Sylvia Pines Uniquites  — her favorite antique store on New York City’s Lexington Avenue. I cherish the few pieces Mom either gave me from her collection or bought for me at Sylvia Pines.
I had some money tucked away (it’s usually what I slip the kids whenever I see them – I’m always good for fifty bucks here and there). I went through my jewelry box and pulled out some things that have been lying in there for the last 25 years (none given to me by Mom). Nearly every shop window from the shoemaker to the jeweler has bold signs “We Buy Your Old Gold,” and so I went with my gold in a Baggie. I had enough to buy the ring. Yes, I could have just put it on a charge card and slipped the expense by my husband, but the point was to buy something from me to me: Something Mom never did. Mom forgot to teach me that sometimes it’s important to pamper yourself. In truth, indulgence can be like oxygen: You can’t give air to someone else if you can’t breathe yourself. With the ring’s purchase, Mom’s legacy was undone, although not without a modicum of guilt and a palpable shaking off of the self-indulgence factor. Belief systems are hard to leave behind.
I realized, it wasn’t simply that I loved the ring. Rather, I was drawn to it. The ring personified all things metaphorically a “pearl:” Simple, raw, unprocessed, valuable — and yet refined. In other words, the ring defined Mom. The purchase was an ode to Mom’s dreams and pursuits many of which, since she’s been gone, I realize were unfulfilled. It said, “See, Mom, once in awhile you can do something that’s just for you.”
I lost the ring this past weekend when Mark and I were in Miami. The humidity caused my hands to swell and I placed the ring on a magazine atop a table on the balcony of our hotel room. A false move into the table sent it flying to the ground below – a mix of saw grass, foot-high reeds, and a swamp. I am covered with spider bites now from crawling on the ground for hours, using a fork to separate the blades of grass and stones as I searched everywhere but the swamp.
For sure, I don’t want another ring , and I don’t want a duplicate because there is none. Like Mom, the ring was one of a kind. I’m trying to figure out what the Universe is trying to tell me.

OK, so here’s a trick question for you all. What’s worse: Being dressed in black Lycra, exiting the gym (and feeling, oh, so sassy) and falling flat on your knee, or being dressed in black Lycra, exiting the gym (and feeling, oh, so sassy) and falling flat on your knee in front of a construction crew in muscle shirts? Oh, and did I mention that you’re old enough to be the mother of probably the oldest crew member who says, “Are you all right, Ma’am?” as you bend down to retrieve the contents of your spilled gym bag which you’d forgotten to zip, brush the wet tar off your arm, and hitch up your Capri Lycra pant leg to exhibit a slightly bloody knee and a deep blue bruise resembling an eggplant (the downside of daily baby Aspirin).
The saving grace was that for some reason I shaved my legs and moisturized this morning before working out.
Ah yes. I remember the days when I was a young Miss as opposed to a Ma’am, and I strutted past construction crews — bristling and welcoming the whistles at once. Now, mind you, I was hardly expecting any attention as I walked past the crew. I was simply feeling “spry,” and trying to cross the street which resembles a war zone downtown here in New York City as the new subway hub is being built and office buildings are renovated to make for more lavish and overpriced residential “dwellings.” Apartments are no longer called “apartments” – they are “dwellings” or “residences” where “habitation” is a “lifestyle.” The advertisements and billboards woo us: Come home to a “sanctuary,” a “haven” in an urban jungle. Lobbies are dimly lit Zen-like labyrinths with black slate floors, waterfalls, and couches so low that both sitting down and rising are challenges for those over 50. As for the slate floors and dim lights, falling on your keester is a definite maybe.
So, there I was after a great workout, exiting the presciently named Crunch, nimbly stepping in between a cement mixer and a paver when the toe of my sneaker caught in the small gulley between the new curb and the old sidewalk, and although to my credit, I did not go down like a lead balloon, I did execute a rather awkward partial handstand. As I write this blog, I notice that aside from the eggplant (hmmm…perhaps aubergine? tres chic) knee, the knee also has a dotted circular abrasion (wet tar will do that to you), there is a sliver of glass in my left hand, and a deep blue bruise on the palm of my right hand.
The upside is that most New Yorkers pick up after their dogs now, and my teeth are still in my head.
Speaking of teeth (or lack thereof), in the last year, I have managed to pulverize bridgework on the upper left of my mouth (the original loss was the aftermath of a mistakenly deployed air bag about ten years ago), and pulverize “real” teeth on the upper right. I now have one less bridge than Lower Manhattan. Upon examination, the oral surgeon asked if I was “under stress.”
“Why?” I asked, trying to talk with the rolled gauze pad between my gum line and teeth (and feeling oh, so lovely, as one can only feel while drooling at the dentist).
“You’re a grinder,” the dentist said solemnly.
“Meaning?”
“You probably should sleep with a device.”
“A device?” (Grinding? Device? Though I figured he wasn’t thinking of some “toy”  from The Pink Pussycat Boutique – does that place still exist?)
“Yes. A bite plate. To prevent you from grinding.”
Attractive, I thought. I imagined the scenario. “Excuse me, darling, while I slip into something more comfortable and put in my bite plate.”
My dentist made me a subtle device that fits between my upper and lower front teeth. Add some pointy ears and I would look like Alfred E. Newman.
“How about if I just wear wax lips?” I asked, device in place, as I viewed my visage in a magnifying mirror under the fluorescent lighting in the dentist’s office (yet another assault to my increasingly fragile self-image).
And so, after the fall, I sit here now with a bag of frozen corn on my purple left knee. I should mention that this most recent fall comes three months after a fall from the window sill in my apartment onto my right knee. I climbed onto the sill seeking leverage as I attempted to open the gargantuan window that was sealed so tight, it was immovable (the aftermath of this heat wave which caused the frame to “swell”). I finally called the handyman to open the pane glass mammoth: Even he needed to call an assistant to lend two more hands. I fell because it really is foolish to climb on a window sill while wearing high heels (at any age) and step down onto an unstable hollow hassock when the hassock’s lid is askew.
The answer to the trick question is obvious: My ego is far more bruised than my knee, and hurts a lot more.

The woman makes her home in the doorway of the church on my street. She sits on post office crates, and is surrounded by cloth and plastic bags filled with her belongings. I have seen her bathe in the fountain on the next block. I have never seen her sleep. Most of the time, she writes in a notebook. Once I watched her, and saw that she writes with symbols reminiscent of hieroglyphics. There was nothing resembling words. Her drawings are small, and executed with deliberation and diligence. Often, she sings – gospel – in a voice that resonates down the tunnel of the narrow streets here in lower Manhattan. I wonder if, as a child, she sang in a choir. If once she dreamed of being a singer. Yesterday, when I got off the subway in the 100- plus degree heat, I heard an echoed clapping. As I walked toward my apartment, the sound came closer and louder, and there was the woman, dressed in layers of gauzy cotton clapping her hands and dancing wildly in the middle of the street which was closed to traffic. It was one of the few times I have seen her not sitting. She seemed oblivious to the heat, agile, and ageless. I have never heard her ask for money or food. She appears to be well-fed, if not robust, and typically has something to eat newly wrapped in aluminum foil, and a bottle of water or soft drink. I would imagine that the local restaurants (and there are many) bring her sustenance.
I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side where the homeless (a term unused back then) were oddities in the 1960’s and 1970’s – and quickly carted off lest the neighborhood be “sullied.” In other areas of New York City – Times Square, The Bowery, near the old Madison Square Garden, what we then called “bums” or “hobos” wandered the streets and slept in doorways — they were more than predominantly male, and most of them looked aged. Of course, when you’re a child, everyone looks aged. I remember the Sundays when my father drove the family in his Cadillac, turning off the FDR Drive onto Houston Street, and locking the doors with a flourish, the automatic locks snapping down like prison gates.
“Bowery bums,” he explained, as I gazed out the car window. “Most of them are veterans or were journalists during World War II. They’ve lost their way, but then again you never know. You have to be careful.”
Our destination was Chinatown for trinkets, and then a stop at Katz’s Delicatessen for a hot pastrami sandwich and a Cel-Ray Soda. Clinging tight to my mother’s hand, we quickened the pace as we walked to and from the car. I was both fascinated and terrified by this other world, and eager to get back to the sanctuary of not only the Cadillac, but the Upper East Side.
The city’s homeless now transcend both age and gender. Although they are ubiquitous in Manhattan, I am not inured to their presence. I have made so many calls to 911 when concerned that someone is not breathing that I am wondering if 911 has me listed as a “crank.” Just the other day on Mulberry Street, a man lay on the corner, swathed in rags, the side of his face pressed against the hot pavement, his bare feet filthy – and none of the telltale signs that the corner might be his home (shopping cart, bags, blankets, plastic cups). I stopped (yes, at a safe distance) to see if his chest was going up and down. I couldn’t tell, and called emergency. I waited a while, and no one came. I called again, and they said that someone was on the way. Passersby walked around him, barely glancing down, reminiscent of the scene in Midnight Cowboy when the unconscious man lies on the street in front of Tiffany’s. The neighborhoods once notorious for human debris have been cleaned up. Times Square is a mall: It’s misleading. The homeless have merely been cleared out of Times Square so the tourists have a different impression.
A wave of unidentifiable emotion came over me when I discovered that the joyous clapping and dancing came from the woman at the church who seemed undaunted by the oppressive heat. I wondered where she was from, if she had a family anywhere anymore, and what she was like as a child. I wondered what happened to her along the way. Was she ever in love? Did she ever have children? Was her decline insidious, born from trauma, born from mental illness? Is she even remotely aware of the men in suits and ties, and the women in their black pumps and narrow skirts who disappear into apartment and office buildings and dine in the windows of restaurants across the street from where she lives?
Joseph O’Neill writes in his novel “Netherland” that once we have lived in Manhattan, it is not only difficult to leave, but nearly impossible not to miss it if you do. I used to believe that more than I do now, and yet there is a part of me that remains nearly addicted to this city despite what is a cacophony of the harsh, pleasant, comforting, miserable,and frightening. The city can assault you with its gloom and lift the spirits within a block’s walk. It is a film noir, and so black and white, with eight million stories, indeed.
I wonder what would happen if I tried to speak to the woman who lives in the church doorway – or perhaps her world is best left to both her imagination and mine. At least downtown here, nestled in the church doorway, she appears to be safe, and appears to feel at home.

Jimmy Dean died. Really, I didn’t know his music well. When he became popular, I was around 10. Then, in the 1970’s when he had a TV show and more hit songs, I was busy with folk singers, protests, and poetry. Back then, country music didn’t appeal to me. Funny thing is, now I love it – the lyrical stories set to music, the romance, the cowboys in their ten-gallon hats and boots.
When I read Dean’s obit, I vaguely remembered The Jimmy Dean Show and the beat of “Big Bad John.” He was, for me, just the “sausage king” and I had no idea he owned the company. I thought Jimmy Dean Sausage was just one of those entities where a “star” lends his name to a company because he’s been put out to pasture and it’s the only gig he can get.
Dean’s death at 81 was headline news on the Internet this morning. According to The Associated Press, “He had been sitting down to eat dinner in front of the television when his wife [Donna Meade Dean] went into the other room. When she returned, he was unresponsive and was later pronounced dead…Dean lived in semiretirement with his wife, who is a songwriter and recording artist, on their 200-acre estate just outside of Richmond, where he enjoyed investing, boating and watching the sun set over the James River.”
I am trying to picture him in those last moments: Was he sitting on the couch, his dinner spread out on a tray table or a coffee table…a flat screen just across the room? Or was he sitting at a dining table or a kitchen table? What I take away is that he sat down to dinner, the way he always did, and then painlessly and quickly died.
After reading about Jimmy Dean online, I picked up the New York Times. Every morning for a little over a year I read the obituaries. I read them before reading headline news. It’s a morbid habit I’ve developed since my mother died. In the last year, I have read obituaries for friends of my parents who disappeared from their lives around the time my mother became ill – either because they became ill as well or simply because my parents’ circle of friends was not a tight one. It was, in fact, somewhat superficial, mostly professional contacts through my father, and with people who were substantially younger. My mother did not have girlfriends the way I do. My parents did not have close “couple” friends the way my husband and I do. At one point, perhaps 30 years ago, there were some “couples” in a small coterie of friends, but all of them were dead or invalids by the time my mother became ill. Sometimes I see obits for the parents of friends I “used to know,” and for parents of people with whom I went to high school or college. And, of course, I look at the ages and causes of death. As I said, it’s a morbid habit. I haven’t quite figured out exactly why I do this. I think it’s a way for me to honor the dead, and I all too often read about someone whom I wished I had read about and known about while they were alive. Just in the last two days, for example: Joan Hinton died at 88. She worked for the Manhattan Project and helped develop the atom bomb but then spent the rest of her life as a Maoist working on dairy farms in China, and Dr. Fred Plum, 86, who coined the term “persistent vegetative state” and wrote the essential text “Stupor and Coma” in 1966 with Dr. Jerome Posner. People like that: I wished I’d followed them when they were in the throes of living. And then there are all the paid obits for the non-famous written as short stories in small type trying to capture a life well-spent signed by those who knew and loved them.
Perhaps I read the obituaries because I believe that we exist as long as we are remembered. But how do we want to be remembered? I would imagine that Jimmy Dean would be pleased that one of the memories of him was watching the sunset. My mother’s paid obituary had my name incorrectly (it used my husband’s surname and not my own). I’ve stopped sweating the small stuff, but for some reason that small mistake still irks me – perhaps because it was a bone of contention between my mother and me: She worried that using my “maiden name” would offend my husband. I argued that she needed to stop using the expression “maiden name” since I was never a maiden. On the days when I believe in ghosts, I wonder if she’s puzzled as to why my name appeared in that form after she died – maybe she’d think that I finally stopped arguing.
I wonder what my mother would have written in her own obit to capture her essence.
I wish that my mother could have spent evenings watching sunsets in her “golden years” rather than spending five years tarnished by illness and true confinement. I wonder when it was that Jimmy Dean unknowingly watched his last sunset over the river. I’m guessing it was probably better if he didn’t know that it was his last one.

Headline news! Breaking news! After 40 years of marriage, Al and Tipper Gore Are Calling It Quits! Third Party Involvement? Is Al Having an Affair? Does Al Have a Younger Tipper Doppelganger? What Does It Mean Financially?
Forty years of the Gore marriage – crises, careers, children, grandchildren — now tabloid fare with the usual tabloid hint of scandal.
Well, for one thing, as we baby boomers get older, 62 can be the new 42 – particularly when you have the cash to back you up in terms of a lifestyle that doesn’t take its toll medically or cosmetically. In the case of the well-heeled Al and Tipper, perhaps they feel they still have a chance to re-invent themselves — albeit separately.
The photos capturing their previous “romantic moments” sadden me – for them. Yes, they’re a public couple so they had to expect all of those pictures would surface. But they’re a private couple, too. Do either of them (or their children) read the comments beneath the snapshots?
“Why not just stick it out?”
“I’m blessed that I’ve had marital bliss for 33 years!”
“Al is a nincompoop and Tipper has just outgrown him.”
“He’ll probably find a younger Tipper!”
All those photos with what appeared to be heartfelt embraces. Were they merely posing? Who knows? Either way, it’s got to hurt.
I could never understand the notion of married people needing to “stick it out.” For whom? For the sake of the children? I am a firm believer that children of any age know when their parents’ marriage is not a “good” one…that growing up in an unhappy “intact” home is worse than growing up in one that’s “broken.” Do we stick it out for our extended families to spare them the shame, the explanations, the angst? At its essence, what makes a marriage differ from a romance? Isn’t marriage a romantic relationship that became licensed? Sure, we make wedding vows. But can we keep the promises and own the same dreams that we had at 22 some 40 years later? When the connection frays, the chemistry flattens, the sizzle (albeit intermittent after decades) loses steam, the conversations tire… do we really want to settle for “sticking it out?” True – the best of marriages take work. But sometimes, perhaps, does the effort simply become too strenuous?
And, by the way, what is the reason the headlines question if Al is the one with “third party involvement?” Why does society typically assume it’s the man who is the “infidel” and not the woman — particularly not one who is a wife and mother? Of the 100 women whom I anonymously interviewed on the subject of their marital infidelity (To Love, Honor, and Betray: The Secret Life of Suburban Wives), there was only one who got “caught” – and that was because she wanted to get caught, and went off with her lover. The others – and, trust me, none of them were “types,” neither Hollywood nor tabloid material — had affairs either because they wanted more “oomph” in their lives, but mostly because they were lonely. All of the women used exhausting methods — real cloak and dagger stuff — to carry on their affairs under the marital radar for the simple reason that they didn’t want to lose their husbands and break up their homes. This is old news: Women are simply more discreet than men, less boastful, family-oriented, more mindful of consequences. Women are also not given a societal pass with a “wink-wink” or slap on the back: “Girls will be girls” does not exist as “boys will be boys.” Hester Prynne is alive and well. The question is, why did the unfaithful wives put such effort into an affair and not the marriage? Their answer: The relationship with the lover was more like a drug-induced high, and they still hoped for the fairytale with their husbands.
But speculation about third parties and captured kisses from the Gore’s past aside, changing the context of any relationship after 40 years is painful – particularly a marriage that started as a romance at the tender age of 19. .
I wonder how many times they tried to give it a go…Did they take vacations to resurrect their romance? Did they walk down the aisle at their children’s weddings and figure, each time, that although their marriage was clearly not satisfying, this was not “the right time” to split? With the birth of each grandchild, did they ask, “How can we do this now?” How did they know when it was finally the right moment to unequivocally state that “sticking it out” wasn’t what either wanted…that maybe they have a chance at what they feel is true (and new) happiness — with someone else or on their own. Perhaps they both pondered, “Is it better to be lonely in a marriage or alone?”
We know that marriages have a turning point when the nest empties. The marriage can choose three directions: complacency, new-found relationship, dissolution. Those of us hovering around the 30-year mark (like myself) are stunned that this vibrant couple (and low-profile couple when it comes to scandal) called it off after 40 years Now, if we heard that Bill and Hillary were divorcing, we might not be as surprised. Perhaps we’re equally as surprised that The Clinton’s are still together — many assuming they probably have a politically-fueled arrangement. Bottom line: We don’t know what fuels and nurtures anyone’s marriage unless we’re that proverbial fly on the bedroom wall. Sometimes we don’t even know what sustains our own.
Subjectively speaking, and knowing too many people in “bad” yet long marriages, I would think that the Gore’s decision took substantial courage and thought. In the end, regardless of who gets the farm, who gets the “big house,” and the real reasons behind their decision – after 40 years, it’s still a formidable life change – regardless of how amicable the split.
Mea culpa for any subjectivity: I hope they remain kind to one another so the past is not regrettable. I hope their 40 years together doesn’t end up in a tell-all. I hope they’re just moving on. For sure, this was not a decision the Gores made overnight.

Yesterday my husband called at five o’clock to say he was leaving the office. This is a man who never leaves the office at five o’clock. He leaves our apartment around 7:30 each morning and returns each night at (the earliest) seven-thirty. The joke is that he works a half day. Given what our younger years were like together, it’s become a short work day. He used to leave our suburban home before the sun came up even in summer, and make the trek back around 10 o’clock at night. In those younger years, the “babies” had been asleep for three hours by the time he came home, and we were both spent. I’d put dinner on the table, fold the laundry that accumulated into mountains each day, we’d talk (he’d eat and I’d “pick” since I’d had enough bread crusts and apples peels at that point), we’d fall asleep close to midnight, and begin the routine over again in the morning. If we were lucky, at least one of the babies (born within less than four years of one another) would sleep through what was left of the night. That rarely happened.
I was delighted to hear that he was leaving at five – maybe he’d get to the gym and we could actually spend some time together in daylight. Just recently, I was thinking that in a past life we must have been bats. He said he was heading to the sale at Golfsmith to buy golf shoes since the ones he wears have not only seen better days but hurt his feet. I went to pilates at 6:30, and an hour later flung open the door to what I thought would be a note on the buffet saying “@ the gym. C U Later. LY” in our usual shorthand, but the apartment was dark. Clearly, he hadn’t been home. Despite the daily news flashes that every male politician, political contender, actor, preacher, celebrity husband, and regular Joe has either denied or confessed an affair, I was nearly convinced that something happened to him. I called his cell phone. No answer. I figured that, once again, he had it on vibrate and, as has become typical lately, assumed it was the paresthesia in his hip rendering that tingling pain down his leg that he often confuses with his cell phone’s vibration. So, for the next 20 minutes I sat, sweaty and breathless (from both the pilates class and anxiety). He finally called. Golfsmith was busier than he’d expected, the lines were long, and once he got to the register, the shoes he bought were the only ones not on sale, but he bought them anyway.
“I’ll be home in two minutes,” he said. “I just got off the subway.”
I took a shower, put the pork roast in the oven to re-heat (I’d made dinner early that morning when he left at seven-thirty), and set the table. Now, I was beginning to get not only anxious but angry – it does not take 20 minutes to walk home from the subway stop. Unable to decide whether I would feel better once he showed up or want to clobber him for making me worry, I called his cell. He was in the lobby, talking on his cell with a friend who’d called from Georgia. A sigh of relief from me. You see, where we live downtown in New York City, the streets are cobblestone and narrow, and cyclists delivering take-out whiz down the streets against the direction of the traffic. We’ve had a few close calls.
“I thought you got hit by a bike,” I said.
He laughed. “I’ll be right there.”
I heard his key turn in the door yet another 20 minutes later.
“You know,” I said without a hello, “the reason they’re called ‘mobile’ phones is because you can walk with them. You don’t have to stand still when you get a call. You can actually move. You didn’t have to sit in the lobby. Get it? Mobile.”
He shrugged and laughed again. “Pour us some wine,” he said.
As I poured the wine and set us up in the living room where we have our nightly pre-dinner catch-up-on-the-day talk, I wondered if this is what happens when one reaches a certain age: Am I now beginning a new phase of neurosis? The “kids” are out of sight and out of mind in terms of when they will be home, where they are, and (to some extent) why they aren’t answering their cell phones.
Am I now going to worry that my middle-aged husband has either keeled over on the subway, tripped in a pothole, or been hit by a cyclist? And why wouldn’t I, instead, worry that he is at some rowdy bar with a chippie half my age right out of Carrie Underwood’s song who’s caressing his wedding band as though it’s a bear trap? My husband is strong, smart and handsome and only in his mid-fifties. If single, he would still be a “catch.”
Digging into my history, I decided that my newest neurosis is because life is calm and seems to have settled into a nearly audible “ahhh.” This is not to say that we are without bumps in the road, but we seem to better accept one another’s flaws as well as our own. Humor, passion, intellect, and a best friendship has exorcised old demons and thrown out the gorillas in the room : A confession unto itself that makes me want to knock on wood, spit through my fingers, spout Yiddish expression like Alevei (It should happen to you), say a Hail Mary, carry a rabbit’s foot, four-leaf clover, look for shiny heads-up pennies on the ground, and generally genuflect. In other words, cover my bases because, for whatever reason, since childhood my comfort zone lies in the realm of ‘if things are good, then something is bound to screw them up.”
I have unsuccessfully kept my propensity for worry under wraps with my kids. As teens, they teased me relentlessly, “Hey, Mom, I know. I’ll be careful. I could poke my eye out with this slice of pizza.”
Maybe it’s genetics – or just imprinting. My mother was an inveterate worrier. To the point where if I was ten minutes past curfew, I would find her in the lobby of our apartment building in her robe and slippers, pale and twisting her hands (and pre-empting the goodnight kiss from my date), and then wagging her index finger at me as she said , “I’ll never forget this.” What she wouldn’t forget was that I’d made her worry that something happened to me, although by morning, she had forgotten except for a myriad “tsks” at breakfast and a bit of the cold shoulder. So, yes, I spent many nights (and days) worrying about my children’s whereabouts, too. Once, before the kids had cell phones, I had the manager page my 16-year-old son David (who was hours late for dinner) at a pool hall in White Plains, NY. Don’t ask me how I knew he was there. I just did. David has never forgotten it. He reminds me – although with less frequency lately, but still reminds me. When David was two, my husband took him out on the golf course at dusk to putt some balls with his little toy clubs, and I made him wear a helmet. What if an errant ball hit his sweet little head? My husband said it was lunacy. I still maintain that it made perfect sense.
Maybe this anxiety also emanates from the fact that when I was young, I was a daredevil. I roller skated wildly through the streets of Manhattan, rode horseback with my equestrian friends (having never ridden a horse), skied (having never been on the slopes), water skied (with no prior experience save a lesson here and there), and generally did a lot of physical activities that required a knowledge that I didn’t have – simply assuming I would “catch on” by watching others. On our honeymoon, though never a golfer, I even teed off at Pebble Beach (and by the way, I hit a 220 yard tee shot straight down the fairway, and flipped the club to the caddie like an arrogant pro. The rest of the round took about six hours and had my score been for bowling, it would have been terrific). I had scraped knees and bruises until I was about 30 and pregnant.
But again, is it nature, nurture or both? I still blame my mother for her over-the-top worrying about everything when it came to those she loved. Although, when it came to my father’s whereabouts, she was typically suspicious rather than concerned about his well-being.
This morning I was sleeping when my husband left the apartment. Typically, I am either at my desk or cleaning the bathroom while he’s still shaving. I murmured, “Do you have your cell phone? Your keys? Your wallet? Your briefcase?”
“Yes,” he said. “And my ass and my elbow.”
He kissed my forehead and told our dog Walter to take care of Mom today since she’s gone crazy.
So, is this the resurgence of romance in my marriage or a middle-aged version of love in marriage? I’m not sure. Maybe both. Maybe genetics. Maybe history. Maybe I should go sky-diving or bungee jumping (never done those before!) and see if I can resurrect that old devil-may-care from my youth.

There is a restaurant that sits on the shore of New York City’s East River. As a matter of fact, it sits so close that one feels as though one is nearly floating in the river herself. Yesterday, Mother’s Day, was so windy that the river’s currents flowed wildly and visibly. It was surprisingly cold for May, and so we sat indoors – four seats right next to the clear pane glass window. Despite the cold, you could see for miles.
My daughter was at home in Massachusetts and my oldest son was flying home from a bachelor party in Las Vegas. It was my husband, myself, my youngest son and one of his closest friends whose Mom lives in California.
The restaurant is not where we go with frequency. It’s pricey. One of those places we reserve for special occasions. And every time we go, we wish we would go more often. Anyway, between the appetizer and the entree I went upstairs to the rest room – one of the few rest rooms in New York City where I don’t go with trepidation. I left my purse at the table. I didn’t remember that the rest room was “attended.” The woman attendant was shining the sinks as I walked in the door. There were sprays of flowers on the shelf above the sinks, an array of lotions, potions and hard candies – and the requisite porcelain dish filled with dollar bills. I washed my hands and the woman handed me a cloth towel.
I left my purse at the table, I explained, glancing at the porcelain dish. I’ll come back.
She probably thinks I’m just saying that, I thought.
She told me that it was “OK,” patted my arm, and wished me Happy Mother’s Day. I thanked her and asked if she was a mother, too.
Not really, she said. But I raised my sister’s eleven children.
That makes you a mother, I said. So, Happy Mother’s Day, too.
And then I wondered what it was like for this woman who was probably somewhere in her seventies, or maybe not even quite seventy, to spend her afternoons and evenings catering to women like me who were fortunate enough to have dinners there. Women like me who drop dollar bills in a porcelain dish with a nod and murmured thanks. Women like me who don’t know what her life was like raising those children of her sister’s, and who don’t ask the many questions laden with answers that are the story of the woman’s life.
I had to get back to the table. The words “limousine liberal” haunted me as I walked back down the stairs.
The restaurant started to empty after we finished our entrees. It was time for me to go back upstairs as promised. No purse again, but two five dollar bills in my hand.
I walked in the door to the rest room just in time. The woman was packing up her belongings – this time leaning on a footed three-pronged cane; her cardigan that had seen better days, hung over her shoulders.
I told you that I would be back, I said, pressing the bills into her hand.
And then I asked her about those eleven children. They were her sister’s (as she said before), and her sister had them one after the other, and then her sister died young. Two of the children died when they were in their 30’s. The oldest one is now 60.
So, this is your older sister, I said.
No, this was my younger sister, she said, shaking her head.
Quick calculations told me that her sister must have been a teenager when she started having all those babies. More calculations told me that the woman was probably not more than a teenager herself when she started to take them on as her own. And then the woman talked on, telling me of the ones who are successful, the “grand babies” she has now.
Once, a long time ago, an older journalist named John Hanna mentored me. One of the greatest lessons I took away from him was that the best stories are big ones about little people.
I’m Stephanie, I introduced myself. What’s your name?
I’m Mae, she said.
And in that moment as we told our names, Mae took my hand in hers and just looked at me. And within a moment she pulled me into a tight embrace and planted a kiss on my cheek, and then she just hugged me into her and squeezed me hard in a way that I imagine she had squeezed those eleven children at one time or another.
I was going to take the subway home, she said, tucking the two fives into her skirt pocket. But now I am going to take a cab.
She said she was there on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays and had been for many years.
Come back and see me, she said.
I will.
My mother used to say that “any cat can have kittens” when it came to motherhood. So true. Being a mother isn’t about giving birth – as proven by Mae. I was missing my mother yesterday – no more than I do every day, but her absence was driven home even more by all the cards I couldn’t buy for her again for the second year in a row since she died.
There was I who was so grateful for my children who are simply my favorite people on earth (and not because they’re “mine”). There was I, feeling such a kaleidoscope of emotions with Mae as we stood in that rest room. Two people from such different worlds with a common denominator of womanhood and motherhood. And, if I were to be perfectly honest, that maternal embrace of hers meant the world to me when I needed one so badly. Next time I see Mae, I want to hear more about her life. Mae has become my special occasion for going back there – even if all my husband and I do is have a glass of wine at the bar.