Yesterday I watched the years from 1952 -1976 speed by in roughly two hours. Until a month ago, these were the missing years among reels of 16 MM movie film, finally unearthed in a wooden wine crate on the back of a closet shelf in my parents’ old apartment. I had often wondered where those years had gone, both literally and figuratively.
You can find almost anything in New York City, and sure enough, there is a company on West 36th Street that will, for quite the price, transfer old movies to DVD in less than 72 hours and with amazing clarity.
The past weekend began with a trip to West 36th Street on Friday morning where I picked up my DVD treasure. Early Friday afternoon, my daughter Ellie (the bride-to-be) arrived, and then her five closest friends came to town that evening. This was the weekend to choose the bridesmaid dress. What I feared might become an ordeal akin to something like a fierce roller derby went far better than I’d anticipated. Two stores and five hours later on Saturday afternoon, we found the perfect dress (dubbed “Jazz Singer” by one of Ellie’s “maids” who walked out of the dressing room and said she felt like singing some sort of “doobie doobie doo” number). The simple black chiffon sheath looked perfect on all five young women who possess every possible body type. True, there were moments when I thought there could be a brawl, and when I bit my lip so hard I thought I drew blood. A lunch with an exotic cocktail for each “maid” in between Priscilla of Boston and Vera Wang seemed to soothe tensions – especially my own. Alas, they were all asked to produce ID and I was not. Guess La Mer isn’t that much of a miracle cream after all.
We went “home” to our apartment (where four of the girls stayed for the weekend) and broke out wine, and plates filled with cheeses, shrimp, chips and salsa – a hip hop CD playing in the background, prompting the maid of honor (the CD’s owner) to do a great stanky leg. Until that moment, my husband swore no one could really dance to hip hop. That night, the girls went out, and came home at four in the morning. I could hear their laughter in the living room until nearly 6 a.m. As tired as I was, their voices were a melody for me as I lay awake. It brought me back to summer nights when my kids “hung out” on our wraparound porch with their friends until the wee hours.
I suppose I should have made a video.
When everyone left on Sunday afternoon, the apartment felt empty. Four loads of sheets and towels later, I felt somewhat the way I used to at the end of a more than busy day when my three babies were finally sleeping: Sated, spent, and in dire need of total quiet.
My stomach is queasy today, and I am feeling rather spent. I believe it is a combination of taking my daughter and her five bridesmaids shopping for their gowns, last night’s Chinese food, and the lifetime that sped by on DVD. My daughter and I watched a bit of the DVD late Friday afternoon before her friends arrived, and although I was uncertain, Ellie said aloud that I have not changed too much since I was four. Eerily true in essence: Still long straight blondish hair and bangs, and still possessing somewhat frenetic body language. I was, and remain, in constant motion. It was odd to see myself as a child (typically wearing some sort of organza party dress and Mary Janes even when playing on the monkey bars in Riverside Park) and then think about that child (how could that have been me?) now as the mother of the bride. Almost creepy.
There was the “chapter” with my old college boyfriend, and another at my brother’s college graduation with his old girlfriend (still a dear friend of mine) and my ex-husband. I am holding up my ring finger as I sit in the sea of mortarboards – clearly boasting my new gold band. In another chapter, there were all the friends of my parents – some whom I remembered distinctly, and others whose familiarity was vague, where I could no longer put a name to a face. Why didn’t anyone think about holding up signs in those movies? Lips were moving, and there was clearly so much conversation, with no one thinking about the absence of audio.
In one clip shot in the summer of the 1967, there was a group of my parents’ friends sitting around a swimming pool – the women lounging on strapped canvas lounge chairs, all sporting white-rimmed sun glasses, some wearing kerchiefs. Their rather beefy husbands stood in a circle pool side, smoking cigarettes, and holding rocks glasses. I remember that day: It was July 4th weekend and the boy I loved that summer had just left for boot camp, headed to Vietnam. I was pining away. Maybe it was evident on film or maybe I just recalled the teenage angst on my face. Just the other day, that boy turned 60.
There were several chapters where my mother wore the same halter-style gold lame dress and platform shoes ( much like ones I just bought the other day at Shoe Woo on Lexington Avenue).
I watched, mesmerized, sitting on the edge of the bed, constantly pressing the “pause” button on the remote to still an image…lingering…examining the silent movie nearly microscopically. I recalled old emotions and summoned new ones: the child in a party dress who twirled with abandon, the thrill of learning to ride a two-wheeler, the kisses from my mother, the young women (my mother, her friends, and myself) who appeared oblivious to the notion of heartbreak or loss. Watching all this on the heels of my daughter’s wedding as I slip into the role of mother-of-the bride as easily as I once wore organza on the monkey bars and, in later years, my Landlubber’s and a poor boy sweater.
In most of the movies, I was a child either swimming, biking, or blowing out candles on a birthday cake (to a round of silent applause). The adults were either at gardens parties, weddings, or some sort of lavish dinner at my parents’ apartment when it was brand new and shining even in black and white. Life looked nearly perfect on film: My parents possessed a movie star air about them. The not-so-good memories interrupted what appeared to be nearly idyllic. I wonder: If we press an imaginary button on an imaginary remote to freeze certain moments, might we rewind, and do and say things differently – especially if we think about 24 years flying by in two hours. It gives one true pause.
Archive for February, 2010
When I was a child, our family spent a lot of time in Hollywood Beach, FL. My grandparents had a small ranch house about a half block from the beach with a detached garage that they converted into a guest house. The main house had a television recessed into a white brick wall and a gas fireplace that burst into blues and yellows at the flick of a switch. I remember curling up beside my mother as she read aloud to me from The Reader’s Digest – Humor in Uniform and Life in These United States – many of the jokes needing explanation, but her laughter was infectious. The scent of her Arpege filled me with comfort mingled with the scents of my grandmother – Pond’s Cold Cream, Emeraude Perfume, Coty Powder – as she sat near us in her armchair (it swiveled) knitting something. I keep the scents of both women in my medicine cabinet for times when the olfactory is the boost I need to remember more innocent days.
I learned to swim in the Atlantic as well as at a nearby “beach club.” When it came to the water, even the swells of the ocean, I was fearless. Back then, in the late 1950’s, the community was hardly upscale, even then it was quite honky-tonk, yet there was an element of safety – perhaps endemic more to the era than to the area.
As Fate would have it, my husband and I have dear friends who have a home in Hollywood Beach. Last week, we spent a winter respite there. Their home, unlike that of my grandparents, is in a more upscale area of Hollywood, hovering on the shores of the Intercoastal, in an enclave that is far from that across the Causeway which remains not only honky tonk but now bordering on sleazy. Once, Hollywood Beach was simply that kind of seaside town that typically lends itself to pinball machines, beer joints, fudge, taffy, and surf shops. Where my grandparents house still stands, the efficiency motels from the 1950’s also remain, but now they have become decadent – the sorts of places where I believe transients drift through nearly unnoticed – evading the law, leaving behind dark pasts en route to even darker futures. Maybe that shadowy imagery is my imagination at work, but the ramshackle, salt-eroded, peeling, and faded once pastel motels seem like perfect places to hide out. I walked Hollywood Beach with my friend and tried to find remnants of a clean pastel past, and yet except for my memories (and a few places that are being renovated), little was familiar except for the ocean.
When I was 21, I married a Miami man and moved down there. I made nearly weekly trips (about a 20-minute drive) to visit my grandparents who had moved by then to a more manageable Hollywood Beach high-rise overlooking the Atlantic, not far from their old house. 1975: Hollywood Beach was failing. Miami was in a state of flux – a juxtaposition of a welcome Cuban influence and the older snow birds who shuffled along Collins Avenue in white shoes. It was hardly the neon and glitter that it is now.
Each time I return to Florida, my senses suffer an assault: The sweet memories of childhood and the struggle of a homesick young woman who tried to be married in a place as tropically lush as Paradise. On this trip, I concluded that I could not have sustained my identity in either that marriage or a place where the climate remains more or less the same throughout the year. I perceive a lust for glamor in Miami and the tonier surrounding areas that is not “me.” I wonder what Ponce de Leon would think having discovered the “fountain of youth” and knowing that fountain is now brimming with cosmetic injections and surgical procedures to keep those my age with a plasticine aura of youth.
My husband and I got snowed in on this trip – only a day’s delay but enough to make it a poignant one since we ended up flying out on my mother’s birthday. It was all too significant to be in Florida since for as long as I can remember – long after my grandparents died – my mother was in Florida on her birthday. It was partially because of the time of year, and more because she did not want to be “here” to celebrate – because she wanted to ignore that day. Because her birthday came on the heels of Valentine’s Day, I always sent her either red roses or a heart-shaped box of chocolates and a card that said “Happy Birthday” with the “Birthday” crossed out and circled with a heart.
On the morning before my husband and I were to leave for the airport, as our friends and my husband still slept, I went outside alone and sat on the retaining wall by the Intercoastal – looking straight across at what once was The Hollywood Beach Hotel, a once lavish resort with private beach front and shops that was just walking distance from my grandparents’ house. It was an oasis amidst the otherwise carnival atmosphere of Hollywood. Since those days, it has had many incarnations including a Bible College. Now, it is a Ramada. It is barely recognizable save the towers that are nearly obscured by what I think is a parking garage.
Who could have predicted that one day I would sit on that wall looking over at a place that once was? I wasn’t planning to cry the way I did that morning of my mother’s birthday. My tears came as a shock to me until I accepted them: This was her first birthday when she was not around to deride the celebration. It was the first time I did not send candy and flowers. The first time I did not call her and do a poor imitation of Ralph Kramden’s loss for words as he might say “Happy Hamadahamada” which made her laugh in spite of herself. I wonder sometimes if it is foolish to be in one’s fifties and miss your mother as much as I miss mine.
My brother called me the morning of my mother’s birthday – not because it was “the day” but just because. As I said “Hello” he asked “What’s wrong?” My brother possesses the same uncanny ability as my oldest son to know that something is “wrong” with my simplest “hello.” I apologized for what was then an onslaught of sobs and laughter: Remembering her with joy, crying over her absence.
Still not the best of flyers based upon a fundamental claustrophobia and little to do with flight, by the time I got to the airport, I found myself barely able to inhale.
JFK airport was pleasantly chaotic and the winter air was colder than I anticipated when we returned. I slipped on my down coat at the taxi stand, wrapped my scarf around my neck, pulled on my gloves. We drove in over the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and there was Lady Liberty in the Harbor. I remembered the feeling I used to have when the plane banked as it flew into Miami on warm nights…the way I loved the flat terrain, the endless stream of lights, the sweet smell of oranges in the heat. I remember loving the tawdry town of old Hollywood Beach.. the aroma of salt air, fudge, and taffy. I thought for a moment about asking the superintendent in the building where I grew up in New York City if I could walk through “just one more time” now that my parents’ old apartment is empty. And then I finally inhaled and exhaled. Enough re-visiting. I leaned against my husband and brought myself back into the moment as we drove over the Brooklyn Bridge – the downtown Manhattan skyline glistening silver in the northern sun.
My mother had two opportunities to be a mother of the bride – both with me. The first go-round, she mailed a Calvin Klein sheath in brown paper wrapping to my then home in Miami. In my 22-year-old bride-to-be’s mind, I had no questions nor any notions that brides and mothers typically shared what my mother called “hoopla” surrounding a wedding. I took in the dress for minor alterations, and that was what I wore. The second time around, there was no doubt in my mind that I would wear the same gown that Goldie Hawn wore in Private Benjamin. I went with my mother to the designer on Seventh Avenue, tried on “the dress” and then went on my own for a couple of fittings. Once again: no sentiment, no indulgence, no “hoopla.” I could have been ordering a ham and Swiss on rye from the local deli when I bought the second dress – laboring more about whether to have mustard or Russian dressing than I did about the gown.
My daughter Ellie, who is oats and granola and, oh so green, threw me a curve when she made an appointment at Kleinfeld’s – the famed bridal powerhouse of “Say Yes to the Dress” fame. I have never watched “Say Yes to the Dress.” I have only heard about it through my daughter. I have also become familiar with the newly-coined sobriquet “Bridezilla” – and have been concerned, since Ellie’s engagement in October, that this down-to-earth Bohemian child of mine who can tell you the Latin name of every flower and plant, and wants to rescue every stray dog in America was slowly morphing into the bridal monster. Not to mention that she was raised by me, a mother tied to hippie roots as I combated the trials of suburban convention.
Unlike many of my friends and acquaintances, I was not “excited” by the notion of Kleinfeld’s. In fact, I dreaded it. I had envisioned Ellie and me poking around boutiques in New York City’s West Village or SoHo. Maybe some vintage shops. Clearly picking up on my reluctance and my ignorance of the Kleinfeld scene, and also because she is one of Ellie’s beloved’s, Ellie invited her “Aunt” Ellen to sleep over and join us for the early morning appointment at Kleinfeld’s last Saturday. Ellen is an interesting mesh: She likes Jack Daniels as well as champagne, watches “Say Yes” and “American Chopper,” and likes Bike Week as much as Canyon Ranch.
At the last minute when Ellen said she would be at Kleinfeld’s in the morning, but couldn’t have the sleep over, Ellie panicked.
“Maybe you should get someone else to come with us in case Ellen can’t make it,” she said.
“I can handle it,” I said, trying not to show the little twinge I felt. Ellie had no confidence in me.
“Yeah, but you know how you are, Mom,” she said.
Whenever Ellie punctuates a sentence with “Mom” I know that she feels as though she is talking to someone who either has trouble with comprehension or a screw loose.
We met Ellen at Kleinfeld’s on Saturday morning at 9:30. At the reception desk, I introduced the bride, and then mentioned that I had met at least three people in the last three months who knew Kleinfeld’s CEO.
“Oh. My. Gawd!” exclaimed the dark-haired, heavily made-up woman around my age who manned the desk. “So, do you do The Hamptons?”
I felt a tugging on my arm so strong I thought my shoulder would dislocate. It was Ellie in an attempt to stop me from repeating, “Do I do what? Do I Do The Hamptons? No I do not ‘do’ The Hamptons.”
My eyes glazed over. My sensibilities reeled. What on earth were we doing here?
Our names were called to enter the showroom floor where we were assigned to a dressing room with a personal assistant. It was a veritable stampede as we fought our way through a sea of bridezillas replete with entourage: fathers, mothers, wedding planners, best friends, brothers, sisters. And the brides sporting engagement rings so large that I could have sworn the young women all tilted down on their left sides. The bling was blinding.
Apparently, at Kleinfeld’s, any dress under $10,000 is considered to be not worth wearing. Despite the price tags, the fabrics were indelicate and heavy: I remarked that one could wear the gowns if they were getting X-rays. As Ellie tried on dress after dress, I noticed that my little granola baby whose eyes sparkled earlier that morning at the prospect of finding “The Dress” was no longer beaming. Despite the insistence of our personal assistant that “this is the one” with each dress Ellie tried on, my daughter – her back scraped from sequins, zippers, and general tugging to make things “fit” with giant metal clips used in lieu of pins – was no longer feeling like a bride.
“Look at your mother,” said the assistant, as Ellie stood in a monstrosity that made her look like she was masquerading as a bride. “She’s all teary.”
“It’s allergy,” I said – but, in fact, it was frustration coupled with a touch of fury.
“Mommy, do you think you’ll cry when we find the right dress?” Ellie asked hopefully.
“Not me,” I said, glaring at the assistant. “I don’t cry over dresses.”
The experience was beginning to feel like bridal brainwashing.
About ten dresses later, our allotted hour was up. At Kleinfeld’s, you have one hour to decide on the purchase of a lifetime. We were advised to go to lunch, and talk about everything but the dress – this wisdom offered by another Kleinfeld “official” who, I guess, doubled as the store psychologist.
We put on our coats and left – my baby girl with her lips pursed; mouth turned downwards.
All week long in anticipation of this appointment, I had felt like a crappy mother of the bride – questioning all of my instincts, wondering if I wasn’t mimicking my mother’s lack of attention if not abject dismissal of the occasion, analyzing the reasons behind my mother’s maternal psyche versus my own, and generally, unable to put my finger on exactly what was bothering me about my new role.
It came to me as we three hit the streets in what was the coldest day so far this winter: This “scene” was simply all wrong.
“Taxi!” I called, summoning a cab.
And as we three piled in, Ellen and Ellie looked at me as though I had finally gone mad.
I commanded the driver as one would a trusty steed (with everything but a “hi ho, Silver, away!”). “Broome Street!” I cried.
As the cab drove down Broome, there it was, that boutique I had pictured all along replete with huge plate glass window filled with white dresses that screamed fairytale.
We walked inside and Ellie’s face lit up, “The Flaming Lips!” she exclaimed.
I cocked my head to the side. “What?”
“That’s one of my favorite bands!” she said. “They’re playing The Flaming Lips!”
Clearly, we were in the right place.
Less than an hour later, Ellie found “The Dress” with the help of sweet Katie, the sales associate who could have fit into Ellie’s crowd of friends. Ellen said it was the first time since our hour was up at Kleinfeld’s that the color had come back to Ellie’s face. We would have been out of the boutique an hour sooner than we were, but Ellie wouldn’t take off the gown.
And I admit, I did cry. Not over the dress, but for my daughter whose day, the one she has been anticipating since she was about six, was exactly what it should have been all along.
We three then headed over to the venerable tin-ceilinged Café Fanelli, and over sandwiches, French fries, fried onion rings, wine, beer and a glass of Jack on the rocks for Ellen (after the day we had, Aunt Ellen decided to go for the big guns and we all ate like sailors), we celebrated. We raised our glasses and toasted the notion that it is essential to be true to yourself.
As for me, well, I finally feel like the mother of the bride – because the bride is once again back on earth – oats, granola and green – and dressed like a ballerina in silk chiffon ivory.
