02.|.start - 01

I was born into the fantasy of the 1950s family.  A boy, a girl, a cat named Cleopatra.  Or maybe the cat came later… no one ever told me where she came from.  But in the early days we were city dwellers, my mother coming from Forest Hills and my father born in Oyster Bay and raised in Roslyn.  She told me several times that she married my father for his name, not realizing that she meant exactly what you think, and not that it was a pretty name as I thought in my childish mind.  It was in such a muddle of confusion that I was raised, never really knowing what things that were said meant, and never being told anything much about the past.

It was only my grandmother, Frances Schermerhorn who would entertain me with stories about her life when she was my age, so that I could imagine another time and place.  No one else would indulge my endless questions.  

I have always been fascinated by people’s stories, and the more detail the better.  However, very few are any good at telling them.  Frances was.  She would tell me about her days on the farm, what it was like for her and all her sisters to pile into a cart of hay pulled by a horse to go into town for a day or to Sunday church.  Of picking flowers in vast fields and strawberries for desserts.  Whenever we were visiting for the holidays, there would be homemade pies and a cake, and vegetables prepared so wonderfully that I would inhale them for dinner.  In the basement of their home, there would be shelves of jams and chutneys, and anything you could pickle.  Amongst them always were the crab apples she picked from her trees out back in the yard.  And down the hill from the house was a second lot of land that my grandfather had purchased for her to cultivate.  It was filled with rose bushes that my grandfather had planted for their anniversary one year.  Her years on the farm were evident in her beautiful gardens, all growing wild by the time I was alive, as my grandmother had gotten ill and spent most of her time in bed, or reclining on the red living room couch for most family events, Lawrence Welk and the King Family Singers holiday specials.

I would sit with her all day to watch her soap operas.  When I grew bored with television, there were always several Readers’ Digest in the bathroom to peruse, or the Sears Catalog which I would study in great depth when it was time to pick out our Christmas Gifts.

My first pair of black suede boots were from that Sears Catalog.  I felt very adult in them, and as close to the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders as I could possibly get.

There was a time around 1965 when for no reason that I could fathom, we actually moved to Dallas Texas.  I looked forward to the change, as change always meant that I could reinvent myself.  Even at the age of 5.  However, it meant leaving 1st grade in New York, and my role as the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland, which I willed to my best friend Kathy.  We made our good byes, and oddly, my first lessons in life really didn’t begin until we moved there.

Dallas was a wounded soul in the 60s.  President Kennedy had been shot there, followed by the Civil Rights riots, and of course a massive amount of it’s citizens had gone off to fight in Vietnam, and not by choice.  It seemed to be both broken and growing simultaneously, tall and short, rich and poor, truth is, I didn’t understand it at all.  But the street we lived on was filled with kids, all my own age, and the homes were all completely different as if they had been built as tiny Hollywood stage sets, each one designed by theme.  One friend up the block was named Michael, a freckle faced skinny kid who had an infectious laugh and didn’t mind playing with us girls.  He was particularly fond of my Creepy Crawlers set where we spent hours making rubber spiders with something called Plastigoop.  One day we were playing on his front lawn when a car drove up and stopped in front of his house.  He froze cold and stared at the car, deaf as I questioned what this intrusion to our game was.  As the car door opened and a man in a freshly pressed uniform got out, and Michael bolted to the car with outstretched arms as his father lifted him up into the air, holding him as close as he possibly could.  I stared, jaw dropped at this spectacle of surprise as they walked into the house, Michael’s feet barely touching the ground.  I stood invisible for several minutes.  Yes, of course this was his father home from the war.  I bounced a ball on the sidewalk, staying in place for quite a while before meandering home, making scooping shapes across the pavement with a soft branch until I arrived.  For some reason it was both defined and confusing.  I had stood there invisible and forgotten, but for such a very good reason.  I think I was envious.  Envious of the moment, the affection; the great hug, and the freedom to show such affection without embarrassment.  For some reason, too much affection at home was, embarrassing.  Or did I remember this wrongly?  Was it I that admonished affection instead?  Either way, there seemed very little of it in comparison to my friend’s life up the block, but I also didn’t court it.  If you aren’t raised with it, how would you know whether it was good or bad?  By what barometer can anybody judge the things you weren’t taught to understand?

I digress.  Again.

A year or two later when we were back in New York, my family had moved to Riverside Drive, and then up to Rye for the rest of my school years.  It was while living there that Robert Kennedy was shot, we landed on the moon, and the principal of our school brought his son into every class one day to introduce him to his students.  He was handsome in his dress uniform, and the two hooks, one for each hand, that peeked out from his sleeves.

This was a time when reality was not hidden away, only to be seen by adults.  We weren’t lied to, or treated like children.  We were given the chance to understand things at an early age, so that there was time to absorb and learn from it. 

Earliest memories.  Blue gray.  I was sitting in a car seat, surrounded by blue vinyl.  Car interior or car seat, who knows.  My parents must have been just outside the car, as I was inside alone.  Out the window I saw a row of apartment buildings, brick, and a courtyard with a large boulder in it.  It must have been cold out, as I think I was wearing a ski jacket.  A very tiny one, as I could not have been more than 2 or 3.

2nd earliest memory.  Out in the backyard, a babbling brook.  I liked to watch it at night, and listen to all the sounds it made.  I could hear it from my crib inside.  Even then I was an insomniac.  And being so, I had figured out how to get out of my crib.  I would climb down and walk around the house, careful not to wake anyone up.  One night I went to the bathroom to get a glass of water.  I stood in front of the sink.  It was too tall for me.  I went back to bed.

3rd earliest memory.  I was a little older.  4 or 5.  We had moved out of NYC and into a new house on Dearborn Avenue in Rye.  It was Christmas morning at about 4am.  Of course, I was wide awake.  I had asked Santa for a dollhouse every year.  My bedroom was off a hallway that looked down over the cathedral ceiling living room, where stood the Christmas tree.  I sat down on the floor with my legs stuck under the railings and over the side and held on to the railing as I creeped my head out into the room.  There under the tree was a tiny little suburban house, just big enough for a family of tiny dolls and all their furnishings.  I stayed there staring in wonder until I could hear my parents stirring and slipped back into my room and under the covers of my bed so they would never know that I had seen this treasure already in the light of the moon.

[continue]