Easter and New Shoes

I have many photos in my albums of my sister, Candy, and my brother, Brian, and myself at Eastertime in our new outfits, but one in particular stands out in my memory. We're standing on the stoop in front of our apartment in the projects.  I'm probably 8, Candy's 5ish, and Brian's around 2.  On my head is a silly hat with net flowers on it (if I remember correctly, it had netting, too), and I'm standing with my white-gloved hands folded over my rather round belly.  The coat was slate blue, though the picture is in black and white, and my shoes were patent leather and made a little tapping sound when I walked.  Under the dress, I wore a scratchy crinoline petticoat that puffed out the dress and made me feel like a ballerina.  My sister, probably dressed in pink (I don't know why she always got the feminine colors, and I always had blue, but that was the case the whole time we were growing up), looks like a mini version of me, except she's missing her two front teeth (and apparently doesn't care, because she's grinning widely).  Brian had one of his many accidents shortly before Easter and the results are apparent in the photo -- a slash across his forehead (by the time he was 5, he'd had approximately 20 stitches in various parts of his face:  his forehead, above his teeth, across his chin).  He's a little chubby, too, and his hair is slicked across his head though a little piece at the crown rebelliously sticks straight up.  There's no denying we're related.  Each of us have a wide forehead and blonde hair, blue eyes and the same silly close-lipped grin (Candy is the aberration in this picture, but in every other one of us during our childhood, she's close-lipped, too).

Easter was one of the few times during the year that our parents went to church with us.  Any other time, my father would drop me off at the back door so I could go to Sunday school.  When I grew older and I taught those classes, I'd walk down Walnut Street (where we lived from the time I was in 6th grade) and walk home when I was done.  On Sundays, I spent pretty much the whole day at that church.  I'd start at Sunday school, and when I was older, I'd attend church as an acolyte, then end the day at the downstairs gym, either (badly) playing basketball or just hanging out with the other kids.  And for at least two other days during the week, I spent time at the church -- and any other time I needed to visit the chapel where the huge painting of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene hung, I could get in through the huge front doors of the church, doors that were never locked.



When I sat in the church vestry, I spent most of my time looking at the intricate stained glass windows, ten feet tall portraits of Jesus's life, or at the ceiling, soaring bows of highly polished cherry that resembled the inside of a ship's hull hanging upside down over our heads.  I still think that the Glendale United Methodist Church is one of the prettiest I've ever been in, though I've visited many throughout the world that would rival it for sheer golden artistry. 

On Easter, the whole altar would be full of white lilies, symbolizing the majesty of Christ's rising and the sermon would be one of hope and love.  Everyone wore new hats, new clothes, new patent-leather shoes, just like mine, and after church was over, we'd drive to the cemetary where my grandparents were buried and deliver lilies to their graves.  If it was too cold, as it often was during the month of April, we'd take the flowers home with us until the weather was warm enough to put them on my mother's parents' grave, but they always made it there, either at Easter or later.  That was a ritual I could count on, no matter what.

The week before Easter seemed specially made for children.  We sung in front of the church, the minister would give each of us crosses made of palm leaves, and I would wonder what those palm trees looked like in real life and whether they were bald from all the little crosses made of their fronds.  How could there possibly be any leaves left if all the little children across the world had a palm leaf cross in their hands on Palm Sunday?

I loved those days and still remember them with fondness.  I wish they hadn't ended.  I wish I knew why my parents didn't attend church more often.  I wish they had never started locking the church's doors.  I wish I had never had friends leave for a war that the church strangely supported.  I wish I hadn't had discussions with my best friend's father (the minister of the church) around his dinner table, discussions about the Bible and not killing anyone and the war and why he felt ministers needed to bless the troops.  I wish that same minister hadn't chosen to tell me I was no longer part of his church because I had chosen to marry a Catholic boy.  I wish I still had the solace of that church vestry and the innocence I possessed as a child.  But things change and children grow up to realize that churches are where you live in your soul.  They are not just the buildings where we worship but the beliefs that we practice on a daily basis.

I remember those Easter days and the stories of Jesus and the lessons about the Beatitudes and the Commandments and all the peaceful feelings that the church itself gave me, and I'm grateful for that.  That feeling still exists.  Not in that stone building at the corner of Walnut and Ferry Streets in Everett, Massachusetts, but in the heart that beats in my chest every day.  I am grateful that I was able to learn the stories I did and to realize that there are certain expectations in every religion that we should treat each other as we would want to be treated, because I have carried that with me, even though I am no longer a practicing Methodist.  What those days gave me was the freedom to explore what ultimately became my connection with Buddhism.  Those early lessons became a solid basis for the philosophy that has morphed into what I practice today:  a respect for others' beliefs; a compassion for everyone; a certainty that if we want peace, we need to act peacefully and to not harm others; and an awe for the many places of worship throughout the world -- Protestant, Catholic, Islamic -- that I have visited and which have afforded me that same sense of peace that my childhood church did.

I think that Jesus (and Buddha) would approve.

Surveillance: Party Lines and Water Glasses

At the risk of sounding like some troglodyte, I'm going to start this post with the reminder that when we were growing up in the 1950s/60s, phones were black devices that sat on hallway tables and each house had only one; TVs showed images in black and white, we had 3-5 channels, and each house had only 1 (usually located in the "parlor" -- living room was a term coined later); and people talked to each other face-to-face, usually across a cup of coffee or tea, to catch up on what had happened that day.  Our "entertainment" was simple and wholesome, for the most part, but when the gossip got "hot," the only way others found out was the beat of the tom-tom -- that sharing of info that usually happened in kitchens or back porches, transmitted by women who wore aprons to cook dinner and who wrapped their hair in bristly pink rollers every night before they went to bed.  Those women were our mothers.

It is only now that I look back to the projects where I grew up that I realize just how "entertaining" the stories of other people's family business was to my mother and her sisters (my aunts).  Though they usually shoo'd us out of the room as they stirred sugar into their tea and shared shortbread cookies, many times I chanced punishment and sat behind the kitchen door, holding my breath, to hear the latest gossip.  But sometimes I was lucky and the gossip happened right in front of me.  Such was the case with what transpired with the family who lived next door to us.

Though I don't remember their names, I do remember the faces of the female members of the family whose voices traveled through the paper-thin walls that separated our apartments.  The mother:  thin, hollow dark circles under her eyes, black straight hair to her shoulders, a frightened grimace that stretched her mouth every time she tried to smile (which wasn't often).  She wore gray or light blue shirtdresses, never shorts or peddle-pushers like the other women in the neighborhood.  Most of the time, she ventured outside her apartment only to hang her wet clothes on the clotheslines strung down the middle of the center of the projects. And when she did go out, she didn't talk to anyone, except my mother, and only occasionally.

The two daughters resembled their mother so closely that they could have been miniature versions of her.  The older one, only a year or two younger than I, had large brown eyes, the kind you see on an animal ready to be slaughtered.  The younger one, probably a year or two younger than my sister, tended to laugh a bit more often than her sister or her mother, as if she had no clue what her life would be like a few years later.  I think back now and wonder whether I might have noticed bruises on either of them, but at that point in time, it was normal for kids to be regularly spanked so I probably wouldn't have thought it was unusual.  I had bruises myself from time to time.

I mention the bruises because it was the mother who sported black eyes so often that there would be weeks she didn't come out of the house and my mother would hang her clothes out for her or offer to cook something for dinner.  The stories surrounding what happened to our neighbor brought the afternoon tea/gossip to a hush.  I think everyone in the neighborhood knew something horrible happened in the apartment next door to us, but no one ever said anything, until that night.

The three of us kids shared a bedroom on the second floor of our apartment and the staircase downstairs acted as our "buffer wall," but there were evenings that even that dead space couldn't stop the screams and thuds coming from the apartment next door.  On one of those nights when the noises woke me up, I padded into the hallway.  When I reached the top of the stairs, the sounds of a woman screaming and crying were so clear, she could have been downstairs.  Rubbing my eyes, I started downstairs, and I saw my parents crouched at the bottom of the stairs, heads together, talking so animatedly between them that they didn't notice me.  It wasn't until I was within a step of them that I noticed my mother holding one of our juice glasses to the wall and pressing her ear against it.  She saw me in that instant, held up a hand to indicate I shouldn't speak, and said quietly to my father, "Don, we need to call the police.  He's going to kill her tonight."

They argued for a few moments.  My father didn't want to get involved.  My mother thought they didn't have a choice.  Each of them concerned that if they stepped in, either they would have to take care of the woman or, on the other hand, the man might unload his anger on them rather than on his own family.

I think of how long the argument ensued now and how I ended up in that woman's same predicament many years later, and I wonder why my parents waited so long to offer that poor woman the help and safety she needed.  But that was another time, a time when men had the "right" to "punish" their wives and children without interference from others.  It breaks my heart that the cries of our neighbor went unheard until that night when my mother finally won the argument and made the call to the police.  Ironically, our phone was a party line and my father had to interrupt the people we shared the phone with in order to make the call to the police.  That is another story, but finally, he was able to dial out and within moments, the sirens and blue lights filled our neighborhood.

The next day, the projects erupted with the story of how the father had been dragged away in handcuffs that night, about how bloody and beaten the mother had been, and about the silent children who clung to their mother as she was taken to the hospital, about the children who had no other family members to take care of them, about the children who were so bruised along their backbones and legs that their skin was no longer white.

The father never came back to the neighborhood.  I'm unsure to this day whether he was simply thrown in jail or whether he chose to desert his family.  But I do remember that the mother started coming to our kitchen to share tea and cookies with my mother after the bruises healed and about how she started smiling and laughing before she and her two girls finally had to move.

Perhaps we have more privacy now, but I wonder if it's worth it.  I wonder if all of our societal "party lines and water glasses" make for our global neighborhoods now, but if someone hears us crying on the other side of the wall, are they still likely to pick up that phone to save us, or would they be more inclined to switch the channel or to send another message on Facebook before taking the step and the chance of endangering their own safety to intrude on our family life and speak about what is right.

Though my mother never had a license to drive and never worked, though she never went to college and often didn't go out of the house for weeks on end, she knew that a husband didn't beat those he loved and she knew how to fight for what was right and how to reach out to those in danger.  There aren't many times I can remember that have made me more proud of my mother than the night she tore the screen off the tragedy that almost happened in the apartment next door to us, and I think if that woman and her children are still alive, they probably sent up more than one "thank you" to my mother for the gift of life and independence she gave them.

Race in the Sixties: Confusion and Conviction

During our playtime in the backyard on hot summer afternoon  my friend Debbie and I decided we needed to be the same.  We stripped all our clothes off, lay down on the grass and proceeded to see whether I could tan as darkly as she had.  We were four, and we had absolutely no clue that she was African-American and I was Caucasian.  Hell, we couldn't even pronounce those words!  All we had realized was that our skin color was different, even though WE were the same inside.  We played the same games, we had the same rules in our families ("come home for lunch," "no going outside after dark," "no talking back to Mom/Dad"), and we both knew that we'd be going to school next year at the Hamilton grammar school.  What we didn't realize was that all the adults knew why we were different . . . and neither one of our mothers was particularly thrilled that our naked young bodies were on display for the world to see.  We had no clue that "bad men" might think dirty thoughts when looking at us, and we certainly had no clue that adults who looked like us might not like each other.  We liked each other, and that was all that mattered.

Both our mothers punished us that day.  Mine made me sit in my bedroom with my clothes still off, waiting for my father to come home to give me a spanking.  I can still remember looking out the bedroom window toward where my father would park his car, and feeling incredibly humiliated.  Ironically, my father never came in my bedroom to give me a spanking, and I suspect that he and my mother disagreed on my punishment.  That was fine with me.  I had suffered enough.

What they didn't realize was that they had taught me a lesson that went much deeper than "don't go outside naked."  They had taught me about the difference in race, and it pissed me off.

Debbie moved shortly after that.  I have no idea why, and I never saw her again, but when I got to school the following year, there were other girls and boys whose skin looked like hers, and I wanted to be friends with them.  My mother swore throughout my childhood and young adult days that I was a rebel from the very beginning, but if embracing different races and cultures and being curious about other people made me a rebel, so be it.  I was and am fine with that.  I believe my life has been a lot richer due to my interest in other people than it would have been if that first "lesson" had turned me into a person who saw the world in only one color.

When we moved to the projects shortly after that time, there were few Black families who lived there, but the family who lived across the street from us (the Johnsons) was a family I both respected and admired.  Their mother, a tall and stoic woman, raised her two boys much more strictly than any other mother on our block.  She took no guff whatsoever.  That was abundantly clear.  And their father, a little more friendly than she was, took a back seat to her.  But I spent most of my time watching the two boys.  They were young teenagers then, addicted to basketball and popular among their circle of friends.  And incredibly handsome.  I fantasized being their age and going on a date with one of them, though it had by that time become clear that white girls didn't date Black boys.  So what?, I used to think.

My parents had always told me when I asked about my own race that I was "Heinz 57" -- a little of this, a little of that.  "Am I Chinese?" I would ask, and my mother would nod and smile.  "Am I French?"  Another nod and smile.  "Irish?"  Yup.  "African?"  Absolutely.  "A little of this and a little of that," she would repeat.  "Heinz 57."  So, it wouldn't make a difference who I dated, right?  My mother would reply that she would love any little baby that came from whatever relationships I had.  Perfect.

Throughout my school years, I had friends of all races (though I must admit there were very few Asians in our neighborhood, so I can honestly say I didn't become friends with anyone from an Asian country until I went to college).  Little did I realize during that time period that my own family was a minority.  There weren't too many families in the Italian-Irish area where we lived whose ancestors came from Sweden.  When I returned to Everett for my 40th high school reunion, I realized that most everyone in my graduating class had an Italian or Irish last name.  And though I had what I thought were lots of African-American friends, they were in the minority, too.

By the time I reached high school, I understood all too clearly that the division between the races was an ugly one, and again, I felt that anger rise in me.  JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. were angry too.  They worked on two different sides of the social spectrum, yet I respected both of them for what they did, and still, to this day, feel they are my heroes.  They validated the questions I had:  Who had the right to tell someone else they weren't good enough?  When would people come to the conclusion that everyone had the same needs in life -- the need to be loved, to be part of a family, to be respected?  Had someone discovered a line in the Bible that said one race was better than the other?  I had taught enough Sunday School classes to realize that the Bible said just the opposite.  I had also come to realize that the Bible said not to kill, thus the war the U.S. was embroiled in also made absolutely no sense.  That rebellious nature my mother had identified early in my life was what I came to define as self-righteousness.  There were certain things that were just plain wrong.  Prejudice was one of them.

Other friends came into my life then.  And sometimes the friendships required a lot of work, especially when Black girls started realizing that they were being treated unfairly by people who looked like me.  It broke my heart when one of my friends turned against me just because of the color of MY skin.  I knew why she had done it, but logically, I had thought she knew ME for who I am instead of the color of my skin.  That was when I realized that my anger was one millimeter of what she felt.

And there was another boy, a senior in high school when I was a sophomore.  I really, really liked him, and I would have been quite happy if he had the freedom to ask me out.  But I was a sophomore, and he was a senior, he was Black, I was white, and he was a star athlete.  There were many reasons why that relationship would never exist.  I surreptitiously watched him with my girlfriends' brothers, seeing the natural affiliation of athletes (no matter the color of their skin), and I knew that he was not only athletic but also smart, and could tell that he was truly kind, as well.  When I shared my crush on him with one of my friends, she looked at me as if I'd truly lost my last marble.  "You could never go out with him," she exclaimed.  "Eeewwwww."  When I asked why, she stuttered, then said, "He's a senior!"  What was unsaid was profound.

Since that time, I've broken that dating "rule" many times over, yet I've discovered that it is still something with which the majority of people don't agree.  Mixed couples still aren't "accepted" in most circles, but dating others outside my race has enriched my life in many ways, and I won't stop.

Because of what I learned in those early years and the anger I felt about it, I marched with those who protested against the division in race, starting in high school and continuing throughout my life.  In fact, just recently, I made a trip to the Mississippi Delta for a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on Civil Rights.  It dawned on me during that trip that my upbringing in New England never prepared me for what the rest of the United States experienced.  I think I'm thankful for that. I'm also thankful that my New England "toughness" gave me the freedom to say how I felt about the ways in which people have treated others unfairly.  And I'll always be thankful to my mother for giving me the freedom to be "Heinz 57."

A-B-C: Spelling Bees

In sixth grade, a sort of adolescent transition took place in more ways than one.  Yes, we moved to a house with a backyard filled with lilac bushes on a tree-lined street.  My sister and I shared a girls' only bedroom, instead of sharing with my brother.  My feminine senses became heightened.  Boys started mattering.  And the high school loomed as a very real "next step" only a few blocks up Broadway.

The traditions and repeated events we enjoyed throughout grammar school started to disappear, though I didn't see it at first and wouldn't appreciate it until much later.  I should have treasured those last experiences, but like everything you trundle through as an adolescent, the experiences were confusing and painful and I was never quite sure whether what I did was "right."

At the Hamilton School, once a year we had a spelling bee, and if you made it to the "finals," you ended up in the auditorium on the stage in front of the microphone . . . staring down at a small audience of friends and family who had come in to cheer on their spelling bee participant.  For days before the bee, my mother would sit at the kitchen table with me, drilling me on the lists of words our teacher gave us throughout the year.  The bee was usually scheduled at the end of the year, right before summer break, so those lists were long.  I remember laying my head on the table, begging her to stop so I could go to sleep.  I knew these words.  Why did we have to drill for hours?

On the day of the bee, I joined everyone else who had made it through the preliminary rounds.  Heart pounding, palms sweating, we sat on stage next to each other until it was our turn.  Then we would be given a word, repeat it, spell it out correctly, repeat it again, then sit down. I distinctly remember every single spelling bee and every word I misspelled that took me out of the bee.  I would go home and tell my mother, and years later, she, too, remembered the misspelled word and would ask me out of the blue how to spell it . . . F-R-I-E-N-D, capital A-m-e-r-i-c-a, C-O-U-L-D-N-apostrophe-T.  Ugh.

Finally, in the 6th grade, I participated in the final spelling bee.  Thank God.  Only this time, the bee wasn't in the familiar auditorium that I remembered, there was no microphone, and no one I knew in the audience. 

I felt more trepidation than I ever had before.  Surely everyone in the room would laugh out loud at the new girl when she made a mistake.  Surely everyone stared at me when I rose out of my seat to repeat the first word back to the teacher.  Surely everyone wanted me to fail.

I knew that my strengths in the classroom revolved around anything to do with reading or writing.  Had there been a Math bee, I would have failed miserably.  But I also had less faith in myself as the years went by because of those earlier failures and my mother's expectation that I would get nothing but A's on my report card.  Perhaps it was my own insecurity that I wasn't perfect that butted its ugly head into the last spelling bee, making sure that I lost in one of the earlier rounds rather than to face the fear of standing on a stage in front of a microphone to be tested to spell words that I would normally have no problem at all spelling . . . but, whatever the case, that 6th grade spelling bee was over quickly.  And I was happy.  My mother, however, was not.

These days, I watch on TV when the grammar school kids make it to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.  I see them struggle with roots and prefixes, know that they are aware of the Latin and Greek spellings that give them clues to words they have never heard before, and I wonder how many of them practice with their parents for hours and hours before striding onto that stage.  I think about the time they spent with mothers or fathers more intent on their child winning than the child him/herself. I also think about the incredible satisfaction and rush of love they share when the child spells the word correctly, the partnership, the bonds that strengthen as a result of spending so much time together striving for a common goal. 

And I realize I miss that.  I miss the intense caring only my mother could provide.  It's not the spelling bee.  It's time.

Moving . . . Nothing Easy About It

During the summer before sixth grade, my parents announced we were moving into my grandmother's house.  After my grandfather died, my grandmother took the insurance money he left her and bought a house.  Ironically, it was the first house she had owned since her kids were little.  My grandfather and she had always lived in an apartment when I was growing up.  Now that I think about it, I realize that she bought the house just so we could live upstairs, and it was probably just as well, because we were able to keep her company and take care of her as she aged.

The house on Walnut Street represented the "moving on up" mentality Americans had during the 1960s, but to me, all it meant was that I was leaving the friends I had known since kindergarten and the school where I had been happily ignorant of how poor we were. 

Though the Edward Everett Hale school was right around the corner from the new house, the walk to my sixth grade classroom that first day seemed more fraught with boogeymen and nightmares than the days when I saw the face in the window at the bottom of the hospital hill.  I knew no one, though my parents had both grown up in the neighborhood and told me tales of Miss Dyer, the principal of the school, who had been there when they were little.  I figured she must have been at least 100 years old by that time, since my parents were soooo much older than I was.

The school's windows, reaching to the ceilings of the classroom (probably only about 10 feet tall, though they seemed twice that size at that time), opened with the help of a long pole with a hook on the end.  My most vivid memory of the one year I spent at that school is a smell of lilacs . . . the scent I have since associated with springtime.  The teacher pulled down the top half of the windows and warm air -- and that fresh lilac smell -- floated into the classroom.  No one paid attention to the rest of the History lesson.

I made new friends there, but I was always aware that I was the "new girl."  The group of girls who befriended me lived in the neighborhood and went everywhere together.  We walked to school and home together, tried smoking cigarettes together (hiding the pack we shared in someone's bushes every night and hoping it didn't rain before we reached them again the next morning), dressed up for Halloween together, roamed the neighborhood looking for driveways to shovel after the first snow (I discovered how to make money then), and talked about the boys we met when we started Junior High.

My family's new house, a pea green, three-story buidling, where my grandmother lived on the first floor and we occupied the second and third, was the place where I would spend the rest of my teenage years.  Its small backyard gave my grandmother more room to garden, and she happily created little beds that outlined the square expanse.  In one corner, a huge old lilac tree grew and behind it, the perfect cave where I could bring my books to lie on the cool earth and read for hours on a summer afternoon.

Gone were the days of playing on a hot tar playground.  It took a while to get used to the move and to adjust to being the "new" person.  And I must admit that it made all the difference in how I saw myself as a person.  I was no longer confident and happy.  Instead, I started questioning myself and everything around me, especially the scary visions of war I saw on TV every night.

But that's another story for another blog.

Glendale Park

Growing up in the projects meant that we didn't really know too much about trees.  I never climbed a tree as a kid (though my father hung a swing from the tree in the back of our house on Woodlawn Street, I moved from there before first grade), though I was great at climbing swingsets.  We never saw a fox or a rabbit or a deer, except on TV, but I knew how to capture a grasshopper in a Skippy Peanut Butter jar (with holes punched through the lid).  I had not learned the knack of skipping stones across the mirror surface of a quiet pond, but I knew how to attach a pair of iron skates to my shoes, turning the key with enough force so they'd stay attached (I had skinned too many knees when a skate flipped off, bringing me to an abrupt halt on a patch of asphalt).

But we had a large, green park in the middle of Everett where we city kids could get a taste of the green grass and trees that I would learn much later in my life could actually be part of someone's back yard.

In the summertime, Glendale Park came alive.  Four baseball/softball fields welcomed teams throughout the day and into the cool summer nights.  Around the periphery of the fields, a paved walking path provided enough space for two large prams to pass each other comfortably so mothers walked their children during the daytime.  My aunt would meet us there, usually with one of her kids in a big black baby carriage, and she and my mother would sit on a bench while the "older kids" (me included) tossed a ball, played baseball, or just chased each other around the bases.  Lots of other moms brought their kids to the park and took advantage of the time to catch up with the latest gossip.  They paid little attention to us, so we explored the whole park, including that area behind the bleachers that would end up being important for a different reason (much different!) when we were in our teens.

The baseball area of the park was flat, but in the back of the park rose a fairly good size hill, terraced at two different levels.  The parks and recreations department hunkered into the first level of the hill, tucked against the rise in such a way that anyone with a yen for sports would be discouraged to try to navigate the trek to the office.  Above the office building sat a double tennis court where a friend and I first learned how to lob the ball across the net when I was in junior high.

Above the parks department and the tennis court was another rizer.  And only the bravest of the brave would make the trek upward so that s/he could catch a wave back down the rest of us.  Up above the park, another set of projects sat with a great view of the skyscrapers of Boston in the distance.  We knew some people "up there," but we rarely visited them until later in my life when my cousins moved in, had children, and I became their babysitter.

That hill became my favorite part of the park in the wintertime.  Come December, when the snows began to fall in earnest, the hill became a sledder's dream.  One could start at the very top on a Fearless Flyer and make the long run down the first (and most exciting) half, then over the rise and down the second half to land on the flat area of the baseball field.  If the snow was particularly slick, one could go over the rise to the second half in the air -- screaming and laughing -- like Evil Knievel.  Plenty of kids did that and more than a couple landed on their skulls, occasionally having to take a trip to the emergency room.

One of my favorite pics is of me at approximately two years old, wrapped up in a snowsuit, bundled in several blankets, and being pulled on a sled by my father.  I remember that day and how cold it was -- and how hard it was to move even my little finger!  My rosey and cold cheeks took at least an hour to thaw out.  Many more times in my life, my cheeks were just as frozen and chapped at the end of a day in Glendale Park.

The Park isn't the same anymore.  Our sledding hill is now occupied with the new high school.  All glass and chrome, it's pretty to look at, but I must admit I still love the brick building on Broadway where we crammed into small classrooms and complained about the cafeteria food.  And I hate that the new building takes up the space where we spent so many happy days sledding, playing tennis, and getting to know ourselves under the trees.

P.S.  Thanks to John Cooney (Class of '71) and my sister, Candy Cioffi, for the pics they provided me for this post.

Grampie

My grandfather (my father's father) was one of those men women gravitated to.  A dangerous man, handsome in a sensual way even late into his sixties.  His shock of pure-white hair was thick and shining, styled in much the same way as Elvis's but long before the rocker was born.  It is that hair and his dark, knowing eyes that I remember most and that pierce anyone who sees a photo of him.

But the Grampie I remember is the one who came home from work in mid-afternoon, showered and changed into a white t-shirt and work pants, and immediately took a nap on the flat, brown, nubby couch my grandmother kept tucked in a corner of their living room.  It was such a ritual that everyone knew not to disturb him as he lay there, white-socked feet crossed neatly, arms wrapped around him like a blanket. 

When he was awake, he was my partner in crime.  We'd sit at the kitchen table eating breakfast when I stayed over during the summer, and he'd teach me how to create his favorites:  peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches; graham cracker and milk "soup"; soft-boiled eggs, butter and mayonnaise.  Now that I write this down, it's no wonder that everyone in my family has died of heart attacks.  We had the worst diet!  But it was delicious, because I was eating it with Grampie.

Grampie and my dad took turns teaching me how to swim when we visited my aunt's summer camp in New Hampshire.  Grampie, tanned and muscular in his swimsuit, would put his hand on my stomach, then show me how to cup my fingers and bend my elbows to do the Australian crawl, and when I least expected it, he would take his hand away and say, "See, you're floating, now just keep on going.  That's it.  Just keep moving your feet.  Dig your hands through the water."

During the week, Grampie worked for the City, repairing their vehicles and managing road crews.  At one point, he ran for mayor of the city, but something happened -- I'm not quite sure what -- and he decided he really didn't want to be a politician.  But politician or not, it was clear to me that everyone knew him.  He'd ride in one of the convertibles for our 4th of July parades, and I'd point him out to all my friends as we sat on the sidelines watching the marching bands and the troops of Army men filing by.  My Grampie would wave and laugh, as my father would in later years, and point at me as if I were someone special.

When I stayed at my grandparents' apartment on Baker Road during the summers, I'd roam through their five rooms, touching the momentoes from his years in the service, his medals, the photos of the two of them, their children and all of us grandchildren.  My favorite photo was the one of him in his dough boy uniform from World War I.  The sepia photo depicted him in the flat, wide-brimmed brown wool hat, his face at an angle to the camera, those hooded eyes of his challenging the photographer . . . and beyond, as if he knew all the women who would be affected by the photo.  He wears the high collared jacket and though we can't see him, I'm sure he has jodphurs on, as well.  If he had a moustache, he could be Clark Gable, that movie-star handsome -- and confident.

By the time I was in grammar school, Grampie was in his late sixties, and though none of us knew it until it was too late, he had lung cancer from smoking close to two packs of cigarettes a day.  No one realized how dangerous smoking was back then, or I'm sure Nana would have asked him to quit.  And every one of the guys in our family smoked.  It was part of being a man, part of growing up, and it was something even I would adopt before I hit my teens.  It was "cool."

Grampie died when he was 71 of complications due to lung cancer and heart problems.  I remember my father going back and forth to the hospital at the end and how hushed the house was when he came home with the news of his father's death.  Somehow, my father realized that my Grampie's death was the first I'd experienced, and I'm sure my parents talked about how to deal with it.  At 11, I knew what death was and knew that I would not see Grampie again, but I had no idea how to say goodbye.  Thankfully, Dad did.

He brought me to the funeral home where Grampie was prepared for viewing.  My Uncle Bill owned the home and greeted us at the front door, a little more somber than his usual boisterous self.  He hugged me, called me "Little Dawn," as everyone in my family did (my father was "Big Don"), then took us into the hallway of the home.  The cut-velvet wallpaper on the walls reminded me of the wallpaper in our own living room, except this wallpaper was darker and more elaborate.  The carpeted hallway led to a room lined with velvet curtains so that sounds became whispers.  And there, in an elaborate, mahogany coffin, lay my grandfather, his white hair perfectly groomed, wearing a suit and tie, looking distinguished, handsome and almost like he would turn his head at any moment and say, "What do you say, little girl?  Want a peanut butter and banana sandwich with your Grampie?"

We were the only ones in the room, my father and I.  He whispered to me that I could kneel on the red velvet bench in front of the coffin and say a little prayer.  I was terrified.  What if Grampie didn't like my prayer?  But I did, staring at my grandfather the whole time.  Dad let me stay there for a moment, and I was sure he stood behind me, ready to answer whatever questions I had.  But I didn't ask any.  I got it.  This was death.  Grampie was gone.  He wouldn't be there to hold his hand under me as I swam anymore.

Dad finally touched my shoulder and led me to the guest book, telling me I could be the first to sign it.  So in my awkward grammar school penmanship, I wrote my name and the date.  And as I followed my Dad out of the funeral home, I realized he had done this especially for me, and I knew, at that moment, that I had grown up.