I Remember: a collection from my early life

I remember skating around the corner and not knowing how to get back home again.

I remember picking all the black licorice-flavored jelly beans out of the bowl and throwing them in the garbage.

I remember cheating at Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey at my cousin's birthday party and getting caught (I was peeping out from under the blindfold).

I remember all the rules my dad had about the phonograph and how to handle LP records.

I remember eating dinner at a friend's house and her mother served Spaghetti-Os, right out of the can, and I asked if I could eat dinner at her house every night.

I remember discovering that shoes made for boys were more comfortable than shoes made for girls.

I remember having my fortune told by an older girl in a gypsy costume at a school carnival.

I remember how self-righteous I was, going "trick or treating" for UNICEF and refusing all offers of candy.

I remember my disappointment when I was told that children couldn't even walk into the adult section of the public library, let alone borrow any of those tantalizing books.

I remember watching the performer Tiny Tim on television, playing his ukulele, and being embarrassed for him.

I remember always going into the museum gift shop before looking at the exhibits.

I remember my sister and I spent hours at a time studying the photographs in The Family of Man book.

I remember getting into trouble at a dance at the Y, for dancing too close with a boy.

I remember when being cool meant your mother let you wear nylon stockings to school.

I remember forgetting my lines in a school play, and just staring out at the audience in horror.

I remember the first time I heard about picnics and couldn't understand why anyone would want to eat on the ground with the ants.

I remember my mother saying we could never live in a private house, we'd always have to rent an apartment, because my father was afraid to step on a ladder to change a lightbulb.

I remember going to see the movie A Patch of Blue with my sister and cousins and afterwards we were all sobbing and couldn't get out of our seats.

I remember reading Little House on the Prairie during a long train ride from New York City to Florida.

I remember when my sister and I rode the subway and communicated with each other, over the din, in our own private sign language.

I remember learning how to type on a typewriter that didn't have any letters on the keys.

I remember deciding that 6 was my lucky number, just before I bet a nickel on a spin-the-wheel game at a street fair, even though 6 had never been lucky for me before.

I remember when our new neighbors, former circus performers, strung a tightrope in the courtyard of our apartment building, and for months we would all hang out our windows to watch them walk back and forth.

I remember when my seventh grade homeroom teacher got angry at us and said we were acting like little Lee Harvey Oswalds.

I remember reaching into the little coin-return box in every phone booth I passed, just in case I'd find some change.

I remember my first modern dance class, running across the room like popcorn popping, and later slithering like melted molasses.

I remember dancing the part of a carrot in a recital, wearing a slinky sateen costume in the brightest shade of orange, sewn by my mother.

I remember thinking a small dust storm in the playground was a tornado.

I remember putting on my Dale Evans cowgirl skirt, with fringes, the second I got home from school.

I remember my first crush on a girl and I knew I had to keep it a secret.

I remember eating all the cherries out of the canned fruit salad.

I remember wondering why the police didn't arrest everyone who went into the store with the neon sign boldly spelling out "drugs."

I remember blowing soap bubbles, pretending they were smoke rings from a cigarette.

I remember when everyone I knew wore peace beads, and we thought we were doing something real to end the Viet Nam war.

I remember all those times I read a novel from beginning to end in one day.

I remember searching all over the city for a pair of red suede boots to wear on Balkan folk dancing nights in the church basement near Carnegie Hall.

I remember when a friend offered me a cup of Constant Comment tea, with brown sugar, both of which I considered the height of sophistication.

I remember buying wide stripes of embroidered ribbon in the Ukrainian shops in Greenwich Village, to sew onto the hems of my bell-bottom jeans.

I remember when I wore bandaids on my fingers, elbows and knees, for no reason, just because I liked the way they looked.

I remember how much I hated bringing my lunch to school in a brown paper bag, wishing I could have a Dr. Kildare lunch box.

I remember being afraid of Jack O' Lanterns.

I remember the satisfying sound of vacuuming up a penny.

I remember my sister and I, at a Chinese restaurant, scooping the vegetables out of our egg rolls, then eating the crispy part, slathered in duck sauce.

I remember being very worried after a mean girl told me to go to hell.

I remember the awfulness of wearing hand-me-downs from someone who had such a different sense of style than I did.

I remember drawing an ankh (Egyptian symbol of life) in blue ink on my new leather pocketbook, and how much it upset my Jewish family, who thought I had drawn a cross.

I remember practicing how to roll my Rs the summer before 7th grade, in preparation for starting French class.

I remember how pleased I was when someone called me the teacher's pet, before I knew it was meant as an insult.

I remember the indignity of being seated at the children's table at family parties, after I was already a teenager.

I remember being so pleased with myself when I learned the Lindy Hop and, better yet, the Double Lindy.

I remember the summer I read nothing but Russian novels and said things like "woe upon woe" much too often.

I remember hearing Bob Dylan's voice for the first time and it seemed unbelievable to me that people would pay money to buy  his records.

I remember my first kitchen disaster: burned toast.

I remember a man named Paul who wore a gold pinky ring and came to our house to give us all haircuts in the kitchen, even my mom and dad.

I remember my 10th grade English teacher telling us that she'd been taken to see the lynching of a black man when she was a little white girl growing up in Alabama.

I remember being the only one among my friends who didn't like Ingmar Bergman movies.

I remember reading a story by P. G. Wodehouse on the subway, about a woman named Gwladys, and I couldn't stop laughing because of the way her name was spelled.

I remember reading The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and adopting Gertrude Stein as my literary hero.

I remember wanting to wear pleated skirts but my mother was a fan of A-line and circle skirts so that's what I had to wear.

I remember when it was important to know which side of your blouse your circle pin went on; wearing it on one side meant you were a virgin but wearing it on the other side was just unthinkable.

I remember my disappointment when I discovered that Bela Bartok was not a female composer after all.

I remember how much I loved these books: Black Like Me, A Light in the Forest, Catcher in the Rye, Exodus, Crime and Punishment, The Red Pony.

I remember thinking that the word "graffiti" was a curse.

I remember being afraid to stay home alone after reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

I remember thinking my kindergarten teacher must be joking when she said no two snowflakes were alike.

I remember dreading the arrival of my piano teacher, every Tuesday afternoon for two years, because she always knew that I hadn't practiced, and she looked so sad.

I remember imitating my grandmother by holding a sugar cube between my teeth while slurping from a glass of hot water.

I remember being so mad at my mother for forcing me to invite all the kids in my class to my birthday parties, including the boys.

I remember the first time someone called me a hippie I thought they were commenting on my big hips.

I remember standing very still as my mother pinned the little gold pin to my Brownie uniform for the first time.

I remember, at a friend's birthday party, finding the most small words in the larger word, Constantinople, and winning the prize, which was a measly Tootsie Roll pop.

I remember walking into the wrong apartment by mistake and thinking my family had moved out, and another family moved in, during the hour I had been playing around the corner.

I remember feeling sorry for my first grade teacher because she only had two dresses, a navy one and a brown one.

I remember when our teacher read us Heidi during the rest period after lunch, and when she got to the end I cried so hard she made me go see the school nurse. 

I remember dressing my Patty Play Pal doll in my old clothes, and thinking they looked better on her than they did on me, because Patty had long straight black hair and I had a bad Toni home perm.

I remember selecting a beautiful Mother's Day card for my mom, at the neighborhood candy store, but it cost 36 cents and I only had a quarter, so I didn't buy her any card at all.

I remember my grandmother teaching me how to sit like a lady, with my legs neatly crossed at the ankles.

I remember everyone being surprised when it turned out I was great at geometry.

I remember dancing and singing with gusto, up until the age of 11, when self-consciousness and self-criticism crept in.

I remember when our postal "zip" code changed from 63 to 10463.

I remember wearing a corsage for my birthday, every year in elementary school; sometimes it was made from flowers and sometimes from candy or bubble gum.

I remember wishing I'd been named April so no one would ever forget my birthday month.

Small poems: end of the year

faux woodstove surprisingly I do feel warmer

your footsteps overhead my favorite sound

morning walk counting steps counting breaths losing count

found: 2 lost mittens one purple one black

just me and my yellow shovel then along comes a crow

relief      finding a tissue in my coat pocket when I need it

she and I and the last two bowls of holiday soup

football game muted she dozes

from across the room your gentle snores

reminding myself I am only me

not for another year pumpkin pie

tomorrow I will wear striped socks this is all I know

over the long weekend we have both gotten blinder, deafer

stretching my ears for birdsong

anticipating snow I gather a pile of un-read mystery novels

every day waking to irises painted on my bedside table

my sister alerts me to a PBS special our shared nostalgia

grandmother's spoons I could use them if I polished them

my old jewelry box filled with toothpicks moving on

crossing an old bridge I can't ignore the rusty patches

morning walk welcoming the solstice exhale

at the window all afternoon lazy and content

yesterday is (almost) forgotten now here comes the sun

grandmother's photograph sometimes I forget to look

dust! impossible to blame the sunlight but still . . .

you wrinkle your nose this new tea is not pleasing

Buddhist monastery plastic orchids in window boxes

my neighbor's leafless tree adorned with Mardi Gras beads

flickering lights in my neighbor's window — remember fireflies

December 25th hour after hour candlelight

silent street no bells no crows

for this one day disconnecting from the world re-uniting with myself

10 minutes from home surrounded by a different silence

all day alone with a book and a strand of new/old pearls

with no effort something tight becomes something loose

singing a sweet song about my amygdala-dala-dala

embarrassing to admit: stargazing makes me nervous

early winter recipe for a plum pudding I will never make

narrow path stepping aside to let the old runner pass

this long red light enough time to inhale winter

what will I learn next — basket weaving? archery? the art of letting go?

what if I had had a brother — what then?

late afternoon too lazy to move from chair to couch no need to move

nothing is meaningless not even this empty pen

jump-up-kale so much like baby palm trees my neighbor's winter garden

this life every moment every moment every moment

paper and ink hold the mysteries   writing in the dark

Assemblages

A few years ago I spent a feverish few days in the public library and at a couple different used book stores, pulling books from the shelves, opening to random pages, letting lines call out to me, and creating what I called "Assemblages" — joining the words of one author with another. Now I can't remember if I ever shared these ... and I want to .... so here they are.

this night

silent as a stone

untranslated

   suddenly — a little rain —

   what now?

Robert Hass, Praise

Leah Goldberg, Selected Poems

under the big sky

stars, like astral flowers

rise out of time

one more, one more, one more, much more

how patient they are

Robert Hass, Praise

Leah Goldberg, Selected Poems

W. S. Merwin, Finding the Islands

the ancientness of forever—

only the echo remains

and the mirror, frozen in a dream

there is something

to be said for silence

Robert Hass, Praise

Leah Goldberg, Selected Poems

Nikki Giovanni, The Women and the Men

daybreak — so loud

calls at the window —

I know it’s you

you were always 

so shy

moon shadow

at an open window

just before you leave

sometimes I remember you

sometimes I can’t remember

W. S. Merwin, Finding the Islands

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Selected Sonnets

Grace Paley, Fidelity

open your hand —

what do you see?

an ocean thirsty for pearls

write your secret name on the rain

do it now

Audre Lorde, Undersong

Rumi, The Essential Rumi

between morning and night

never enough 

years together

darkness covers everything —

in the end, I want nothing

Audre Lorde, Undersong

Rumi, The Essential Rumi

W. S. Merwin, Finding the Islands

fireflies

alone in the shadows

float orange, yellow, gold

this endless night

calls me out: lonely

Audre Lorde, Undersong

Rumi, The Essential Rumi

W. S. Merwin, Finding the Islands

Sylvia Plath, “The Disquieting Muses”

February morning —

an hour in warm rain —

find nothing, imagine nothing, fear nothing

a mountain —

ancient as time

Jane Austen, Persuasion

M. C. Richards, Centering

W. S. Merwin, Finding the Islands

listen —

this moment

turning to snow

who can remember yesterday?

Jane Austen, Persuasion

M. C. Richards, Centering

W. S. Merwin, Finding the Islands

remember one day —

the sun’s birth

the language of dance

name everything —

stars, plants, trees

forget everything —

all sound

stop going around and around

W. S. Merwin, “The Unwritten”

Joy Harjo, “Remember”

Gertrude Stein, “The teachers taught her that the world was round”

nothing is unlikely 

your perfect mouth folding down 

the crescent moon

everything 

turns out to be story 

one tear, alone, in this box

open the night window 

spill your secrets 

visit the snow one last time

Tom Wayman, Carol Ann Duffy, Shara McCallum, Christina Pugh, Charles Simic, Wesley McNair, Lisel Mueller, Kati Kapovich

Drama in the Kitchen

My mother cuts a slice of French toast into little pieces and places them on a plate and puts the plate in front of me where I sit at the small red formica table in the middle of the kitchen.

To the left of the plate is a glass of orange juice, made from a can, you just add water and stir or shake. My mother likes to shake.

To the right of the plate is a glass of white milk. My mother knows I hate white milk. I only like chocolate milk made with Bosco. My mother doesn't care what I like. 

So I spill the glass of milk on the floor and while she mops up the mess I wrap each piece of French toast in a napkin, which I know is an excellent disguise.

Then I drink the orange juice. It makes me feel like summer inside.

I get up from my chair but my mother says SIT DOWN. She says I have to unwrap the French toast and eat it. I wonder how she could possibly know what I've done. Is it true that she has eyes in the back of her head, like she says?

Maaaa, I wail, it's time for Shari Lewis.

Shari Lewis. The beautiful red-haired woman on the TV. With her friends Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse and Hush Puppy. I don't want to miss a minute of the show. Who asked for French toast anyway?

I say it again, with more feeling, in what my mother calls my Sarah Heartburn voice. What is she talking about?

Maaaaaa, please, Shari Lewis is on.

The hell with Shari Lewis. That's what she says. Can you believe it? Me either. I cannot believe it. I just cannot believe it.

17 small poems and a Happiness Poem in 18 parts

lonely cricket deep into the night

heavy shopping bags

i cannot straighten myself

long walk home 

4 a.m. with sweet potatoes on my mind

this old house

rain-creaky

sweet potatoes in the oven

red gloves give me strength     walking into the wind

halfway up the stairs

now is the time for

tangerine kisses

late october

the wildness of leaves

a shy black cat

we stop to admire the mums

years ago 

we knew each other well

up to his ankles in raked leaves

the young monk 

takes time to smile

your hands in mine

still warm

from when you cupped a cup

post-election day walk

campaign signs droop

with exhaustion

damp grey morning

the birds and i turn over

and go back to sleep

morning walk

wandering mind

a clump of snow lands on my head —

wake up!

melancholy

until 

the sun

the old brown jug

yellow and red blooms

no longer jaunty

flitting from book to book

unsettled mind

where are you Sister Crow?

street corner garden

tucked in with the frozen kale

5 bagels

Late November Happiness Poem

happiness is when you wake at 3 in the morning and can't fall back to sleep but it doesn't matter because you're okay just lying there counting from 1 to 100 and back down from 100 to 1 and most times before you even get up to 100 you are already sleeping again

happiness is when you wake from a nightmare and feel the great relief of realizing it was all a dream and none of those horrible things ever happened to you and you can tell yourself "don't think about that" and so you don't

happiness is sinking low into the lavender-scented water, knowing you can remain as long as you want — an hour or even more — and when the bath gets cold you can turn on the faucet and add hot water, you can even turn the faucet on with your foot and not have to sit up

happiness is when you're moping around your apartment on a cold wet Sunday afternoon bemoaning the fact that the only time the phone rings these days is when someone (usually just a recorded voice) is trying to get you to buy something you don't want and so you're startled when the phone actually rings in the middle of these morose thoughts and it turns out to be a dear friend who wants to have a real conversation and you both laugh and talk for almost an hour

happiness is when you re-arrange your closet and realize that for the first time in your adult life you have more clothes in colors (plum, lavender, teal, turquoise, emerald green) and less clothes in black and you are so inspired by this that you decide to get rid of some of your socks even though a week ago you felt you couldn't part with a single pair but now that you are no longer committed exclusively to black you sort through the sock drawer and toss out 5 pairs of black socks you've had for about 20 years

happiness is when you call Time Warner Cable customer service first thing in the morning and in less than 2 minutes you are connected with a real person named Eric (though it could be Erik or even Erich) and you explain your problem clearly and he understands immediately and tells you to press one button and then another button and you do these things and see that your problem is solved and you say Hurrah and Eric (a very young man) says "excuse me?" and you say it again — Hurrah — and then you thank him over and over because now you can watch DVDs later in the day

happiness is when you go outside to sweep away the first gentle snowfall of the season and when you say hello to a stranger walking by he tells you this is his first snow in 26 years because right after graduating from Ithaca High School in 1988 he moved to Atlanta and today is his first day back in Ithaca

happiness is when you are out for an early morning walk and the sun is so bright in your eyes that you can't see a thing and it's a surprise when a person passes you and all you know about that other human being is that he or she smells good

happiness is having friends who give you scarves for every occasion and for no occasion and when winter rolls around again you open your special wooden box and there are all your scarves neatly folded and ready for wear and you can choose a new one each day depending on your mood — is it a purple day? (it usually is and you have many purple choices) — but you can also go with wild patterns of orange and magenta

happiness is when you are walking around your beautiful neighborhood deeply engrossed in your thoughts and you end up walking right past your house and its not until you have gone on like this for a few minutes that you suddenly stop and ask yourself "where am I?" and you look around and laugh and turn and go back in the direction that will take you home

happiness is when you want to write a letter to a friend and you discover that you have exactly the right card to send and even a good picture to enclose (not a picture of yourself! a picture of a woman reading a book) and on top of all these wonderful things you also have an excellent pen to use and you can tell it is not going to run out of ink anytime soon 

happiness is when you remember something your father said more than 50 years ago in a Bronx deli as you were schmearing mustard on your hot dog and it had something to do with you being like Picasso with that mustard and you're not sure if it was meant as a compliment or not but you choose to remember it fondly 

happiness is when you open a book you abandoned long ago and discover a postcard you were using as a bookmark — 13 cakes painted by Wayne Thiebaud in 1963 (a good year for you in some ways) — and this is the message written on the back of the card:
"3/8/13
My Dear,
I would be delighted to join you for lunch April 1st, New Delhi Diamond's Cheers, Nan."
Don't you agree that is a great big happiness? 

(Hello to you dear Nan Bell)

happiness is when you wonder if a small poem will find you on this day so you open a haiku journal for inspiration and your eyes come across the words "peace of mind" and right away you feel calmer and you take a deep breath and then another and realize you are no longer anxious about a poem — knowing it will come or it won't come — and you put on your good walking shoes and head out the front door
(Thank you dear Tom Clausen)

happiness is when you bring 8 books to Autumn Leaves Used Books to trade for store credit and after a quick look around you find a book you want — "The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds" by Diane Ackerman — and even though you think it is possible that you already read this book when it was first published almost 20 years ago you gladly take it home because you remember nothing about the short-tailed albatrosses or the golden lion tamarins — and you still have lots more store credit for a future visit

happiness is taking yourself out for lunch at New Delhi Diamond's Restaurant for their amazing Saturday buffet that includes Bhindi Masala (okra and peppers and onions) and you are very pleased with yourself: no rice or potato puffs or soft golden pillows of fried dough and you leave feeling both full and healthy

happiness is discovering a new shop called Bramble that recently opened in Press Bay Alley (around the corner from Diamond's) — a collective of local herbalists — the warm welcoming delightful atmosphere envelops you the second you walk in the door and you come home with a coconut/lavender cream called "Cloud Butter" and also with a small bottle of Dandelion Flower Essence to aid in your desire to Be More and Do Less — knowing that if you manage to do this you will make your sweetheart very happy
(Thank you dear Amanda David, herbalist and rootworker)

happiness is arriving back at your front door just as your sweetheart is pulling the car out of the driveway on her way to Wegmans to buy a few things that will go well with the veggie soup you made yesterday and she rolls down the window to tell you she loves you and you say the very same to her and then she drives off and you come inside to type up your happinesses for this day at 1:30 in the afternoon