The Boardwalk Argument

(I'm back at the Coney Island boardwalk again with a memory and a smile. For everyone who knew our friend Steve, you'll appreciate how much he loved this and his laughter)


Late in the afternoon after one of the Mermaid Parades, we were walking on the boardwalk and found ourselves behind a woman with a little dog on a leash. It was hard not to notice her. She was statuesque, dark haired, and wearing loose gauzy white pants and a long top that caught the wind, alternately billowing out and then wrapping around her frame. The dog was a fluffy white little number in a red jeweled collar who kept disappearing into the legs of its mistresses’ pants when the wind blew in that direction.


The woman looked back and then strode faster ahead of us. A few moments later, a short, chubby man came abreast of us obviously trying to catch up with her. He stopped, dramatically put his hands out to his sides and leaned back, palms up as if he was ready to belt out an aria. "Sheila!.....Sheeeiiillllaaaaa!" She didn't stop. "Shheeeilllaaaa!" he bellowed again to her, to the heavens, and to the crowd. She walked faster.


We then learned that apparently his name was Dickhead. "Dickhead!" she yelled back at him over her shoulder without losing her long-legged pace. He ran faster. "Shheeeiillaa!," his arms still outstretched. "Dickhead!!" she screamed back. It continued back and forth between them with everyone watching the ambulating argument as it passed by. She'd stop. He'd stop. The dog would stop and try to lay down for a rest. He'd croon, "Sheeiilla?"and she'd tug the dog up and shout back over her shoulder, "Dickhead!" with her arms waving like white sails.


She stopped for lemonade. He got on line next to her and moaned, "Sheila." She took her paper cup and hissed "Dickhead." She took off again. He persisted, stamping his feet. "Sheila??" She walked backwards for a moment jabbing her lemonade in his direction and enunciating the two syllables screeching-ly succinct. “Dick..Head!" He dropped to one knee, his hand on his chest. She glared and turned her back. They were oblivious.


I can't tell you how long the Coney Island boardwalk is by yards, but we walked the length of it absorbed in this argument consisting of two names by two passionate characters in an unwitting performance. When they reached the steps to walk down to the street, he put his arms out once more. "Sheila?" She stopped. "Dickhead." Suddenly, it was over with no other words spoken. We watched them step down to the sidewalk and disappear around the corner, arm in arm, the dog trotting next to them.


For years afterward, and most importantly after Steve became so sick, I could always make him laugh by saying, "I wonder whatever happened to Sheila and Dickhead?" I hope they catch the good thoughts I send them now and then, thanking them for making the memory that enabled me to laugh with my friend just a few more times.

Water Rising

I'm watching the news coverage on upcoming tropical storms and thinking about my own experience a few years ago with hurricane Floyd. That morning I went to work in my office up in the mountains where the heavy downpour all day didn't seem threatening. It was my own fault that I stayed too long. We flood down here in the valley, and I know that the main highway (Rt. 22) gets impassable and shut down for much less than what Floyd was dumping. I was busy and loyal and foolish enough to want " finish just one more thing" before heading home.


Rt 22 had already been closed for hours and I had to take back roads. A mile or so later, my car stalled from water for the first time but I was able to get it started and switch over to a higher road. The higher roads ran out pretty soon, and each new attempt at finding another that was passable eventually brought me to a point where the water was too high to drive through. Five hours later…for what usually is a twenty minute drive...I got about three blocks from home. The entire time my cell phone would not work even though it was fully charged, and I couldn't call to let anyone know where I was or what was happening.


It is scary to see water rising in front of you, but truly terrifying to see it quickly blocking the path behind you and being trapped in between. The water was suddenly creeping up the sides, and then in what seemed like seconds, over the hood and heading towards the windshield. The pressure against the door made it impossible to push open from the inside, and the water rushed in from the little crack I managed to achieve. The car had electric windows that were all tightly shut and inoperable. I was trapped and the car was slowing filling.

Someone was watching out for me because I stalled right in front of some young men who were watching from higher ground. They ran over and were able to pull the door open and me out, and held onto me as we walked out of the waist deep water. None of the three spoke English, but it is easy to communicate concern for another human being. They insisted I use their cell phone (which worked) to call home, and even went over and floated my car out of the deepest water. I wound up on one side of the overflowing brook and a bridge that separated me from home. I was able to wade over the bridge and walk one street over where my family came to meet me and take me the remaining two blocks.


Later on people asked why I didn't just find some high ground and sit in the car and wait. Of course that would have been the reasonable thing to do. It is hard to explain the pull that makes you want to just get home when you are in such a precarious situation. I didn't care about losing the car, all I wanted was to see my house and the faces in it. I wanted my dry pajamas and slippers. I wanted a cup of coffee at my kitchen table. I thought I could find a way to get there.


When I watch the people who say they won't evacuate in the face of an oncoming storm, I can understand how home can trump water rising. I could have drowned had it not been for those men whose names I never learned. They waived my thanks away and watched to make sure I made it over the bridge. My family was worried sick for a few hours. It was a stupid thing on my part. But I look at the faces of those people who insist they are staying put and know that it is not about the structure or the possessions in it.


When you're scared you want to go home…and you want to stay there.

A LIttle Bit About Fate

People find each other for a reason. I guess that’s fate. We all wander around bumping into and bouncing off each other. We get the answers as to why in bits and pieces, not in a Technicolor full screen version with a back story and a director's interview.


My friend Steve and I used to joke about it. We grew up two towns apart and still lived in the same place. Despite the fact that we went to lots of the same places as kids, teen-agers and adults and even knew some of the same people, we never met until we were over 50.


After he was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma he asked if I would be his health care advocate in the event he became incapable of making his own decisions. We did it legally with all the properly executed paperwork. We talked about the things he wanted and how he felt about death and dying and we got all of that straight. What we didn't anticipate was how sick he would become and that his hospitalization would stretch to almost a year. After a couple of months he began telling the doctors and nurses to "ask Linda" whenever something needed to be discussed. I couldn't blame him, it was enough just to hang on, to deal with the sometimes daily dialysis, the pain in his back, and the very understandable depression.


Four months in, he went into the Intensive Care Unit for the first time and my schedule became daily trips to the hospital and remained so for the duration. I had to agree and sign for every procedure, bags and bags of blood and platelets, surgeries, intubations. There were so many specialists I started a list just to keep their names straight.


The important thing was that my friend was waiting each day for me to come. The ICU nurses would tell me that he would ask them throughout the day what time it was and when I would be arriving. Sometimes if he was confused from the medication, he told them that he heard my voice and that I was standing right outside his door. When his vocal chords were damaged by the intubation tubes and he was unable to talk, he would take my hand and kiss it and mouth "thank you," over and over.


There were horrible bad times when he raged and hated everyone, including me. It was so hard not to view my dear friend as hateful and hurtful, and I confess to sometimes losing that battle with myself. "Why am I doing this?" I would wonder, “the rest of my life is on hold while I take care of this person who says such mean things.” Articulate Steve knew how to say beautiful words, and could sting so very thoroughly with them as well.


But in the end there was such a peacefulness. The last time I saw him he was drowsy and smiling. “I’m sleepy,” he said, “Go home. Thank you. I love you. “


I've never regretted any of it. I would do it all over again for my friend.


This brings me back to that fate thing and why we got to know each other in the first place. He used to say to me, "I know my mother sent you." Maybe she had a hand in it. There are many things that my sweet friend did for me that made his place in my life a gift from somewhere as well, but I question nothing. Why else would we have finally crossed paths, for such a short number of years, and at just the right time?

All of Us Veggies

If one more person asks, upon learning that I'm a vegetarian, "but what do you eat?" I'm going to drop a tub of tofu on them...which I don't eat anyway because I don't care what you do to it, it still tastes like the sponge I wash my dishes with.



People seem to think that taking away meat and poultry leaves Ethiopia. They forget that there is a whole realm of food out there that did not start out mooing or clucking, and since I'm not heroin chic emaciated, I must have found it. There are plenty of choices that make me have to work hard at keeping my jeans fitting the way I want them to.


Not long ago I was at a wedding where you were asked to choose what entree you preferred. When the waiter came to me, I made the mistake of telling him that I was a vegetarian and just to bring me whatever vegetables they were serving without the meat. "Oh no," he said, "I'll have the chef make you something special." He eyed me like a handicapped relative and patted my shoulder sympathetically. When we were served he set my plate in front of me and said, "Now there you go, just for you," and stopped short of, "you poor thing." There was a yellow squash sliced in half length ways, surrounded by carrots and broccoli. The "chief" must have whisked the squash past a pot of steaming water or turned a hairdryer on it (with the diffuser in place and set on low), because it was barely room temperature and still "thunked" when tapped on the table. The broccoli and carrots were raw. Everyone else had tiny browned potatoes and string beans almondine, all fully cooked to perfection.


I sometimes wonder if its some sort of weird subconscious punishment for the non-conforming, non-carnivores. "Here, eat this anemic looking squash, that’s what you get for not eating this nice filet mignon, what the heck is wrong with you?" They are also the "enhanced flavor Nazis" too. "No Seasonings for YOU!! Move to the back of the line."


I've been offered things like carrots on a bed of lettuce at a dinner party "because I know you're a vegetarian," when everyone else is enjoying a plethora of nicely cooked veggies along with their meat, or some sort of pasta. I'm always tempted to reply, "Oh no, I don't want to be a bother. I'll just go out and graze in the back yard, I noticed some nice looking dandelion leaves on my way in."


I'm not a vegan, I never met an egg or a piece of cheese I didn't like. I put milk in my coffee. I eat some fish. That puts me in a technical "Pescetarian" sub category, I suppose. I still love the smell of steaks cooking on a charcoal grill, but I just don't want to eat them. Pizza and lots of Chinese food is still meatless, along with a zillion other things. I don't get freaked if meat touches my food. And when I was in Italy I tasted the salami and prosciutto in four different regions. I'm a vegetarian, not an idiot.


At that wedding of my cousin the beautiful bride and the uncooked squash, I shrewdly ate enough calamari and roasted peppers at the cocktail hour so that the "squash that thumped," was a laugh for our table. When the wedding cake was served the waiter looked at me and hesitated, holding the plate with my slice in his hand until I reached over and took it from him. Yeah right, are you kidding me?

Steve's Summer Solstice

(Since this daily writing is in part due to the promise I made to Steve, this one is a about an experience I would never have had if I hadn't known him.)

The "Mermaid Parade" takes place every year, on the weekend closest to the summer solstice on the Coney Island boardwalk. It is a celebration of the beginning of summer, usually led by some mid-level celebrity as Grand Marshal, and anyone can be in it.


It is an amazing sight. The spectators number in the thousands to watch hundreds of costumed mermaids march or glide on intricate floats along with their under-the-sea male counterparts, accompanied by bands and musical groups of every kind. There are cover girl mermaids, elderly mermaids, cross-dressing mermaids, mommy mermaids with baby mermaids, and some mostly naked mermaids spray painted gold or silver.. People drape themselves in netting and necklaces of shells, hats adorned with starfish, and there are sequins and sparkles enough to gratify any gypsy soul, including my own.


After the parade, the celebration continues long into the night. There is music on the boardwalk and you can work your way down dancing to rock, hip hop, salsa, listen to steel drums, and toss coins into the instrument cases of some pretty damn good street musicians. Don't bother waiting on the never-ending line at Nathan's, there are a ton of ethnic foods to choose from, and inhale.


We took the subway all the way out, it stops a few hundred yards from the boardwalk, and is elevated and sunny once you get a little further along. The first few stops were pretty routine, but then mermaids started hopping on. Every shape and size, decked from the simple bottom of the sea creature to the most elaborate showgirl type. Each stop drew a few more, and suddenly the car became a traveling pre-celebration party, with everyone laughing and comparing costumes, a virtual sea of summer solstice strangers engaging the moments. I've ridden the subway back from Shea with a car full of Mets fans after they won (really), but even they were not as much fun as that bunch of mermaids-for-a-day we rode with.


Maybe the solstice has some scientific magnetic force that beefs up our endorphins, or plays on those receptors in the brain that make us happy. I'm not interested in that would be explanation. I think it was the sparkles and the music and nobody giving a damn if they looked foolish (they didn't) or silly. We welcomed the summer dancing barefoot with mermaids. How much better can it get?

Trees And Other Souls

My office window gives me a minute to minute update of the weather. The view from my seat is the top half of the white building across the street and one slightly pathetic tree whose branches reach to this second floor horizon. I watch the seasons change through it, and on the worst work days I imagine that it waves in my direction reassuring me that there is life outside this workplace. Today I'm watching a torrential rain beating its leaves and the wind bending it side to side. I'm hoping that nothing cracks or breaks off causing someone to decide it is not aesthetic enough to be on the main street of this pretentious burb.

Appearance is what matters here, and I am so out of place... Alice through the looking glass in the form of a middle-aged day-dreamer in my favorite hippie thrift store skirt. It is in the air and in the cafe where they charge even more than Starbucks, and in the window of the elite "doggy store" where a sign in the window advertises "Just Arrived ! Italian Cashmere Sweaters." There are three banks and an investment broker on every block, a town furrier (cold storage on site for ALL your furs, ladies) and the Hummers still take up two parking spaces, gas prices notwithstanding.

Last summer there was a homeless woman who sat in the little park on nice days and took refuge in the train station when it rained. The townsfolk were outraged and sent letters to the editor and complaints to the cops. I walked past her many times, sitting on a bench with a bag at her feet and a winter hat on her short summer hair. If she wasn't taking a little cat nap she'd smile and ask me the time. My answer...1 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 10:30 AM,... always drew the same response, "Oh thank you dear, that's good." People called her “disgraceful' and 'dangerous.” They implied that she kept others from being comfortable in the park and made commuters uneasy in the station, no doubt quaking in their fine leather shoes and designer suits as they waited to hop a train to Wall Street. A few were more bold in their revulsion and said that she just made the town "look bad" and that somebody better do something about it before more of "them" appeared. Apparently they were convinced that the homeless have a hotline to advise each other of where the good benches are.

It was quite the buzz for a month or so, and then the powers that be had her ousted. “Sheriff, this town just ain't big enough for a couple of thousand millionaires and a little old homeless lady.” The little park with its carefully appointed landscape and fake fountain waterfall is perfect once again.

So, I worry about my tree. The sidewalk Gestapo here patrols for "neat" flower boxes, ornamental details and tiny shrubbery trimmed just so. What are its chances if it ends up with some branches stripped or missing a limb with a nasty open wound for all of downtown to see?

I worry about some of these people too. I worry about their souls.

Timmy And The Teasers

(Note: Previously published in "Little Book of Poems and other Writings" 2003)


I stopped to have coffee after work with my dear friend Mike, still dressed in my nine to five persona skirt and heels and looking forward to winding down and sharing a little gossip. His 20-ish nephew was visiting with two friends in tow, using his home as a stopover for the night. They sat with us in the fading evening light, comfortably, youthfully slouched on couches and cushions.


Young men never seem to miss a chance to plunder one of their own. A continuous right of passage I suppose, inflicted on each other as they constantly try to one up even the closest of friends. They pounced unmercifully on Tim, the quietest one who was seated next to me on a small settee. “Yep, Tim doesn’t have a girlfriend.” They started in. “Do you believe that?”


“ Old Timmy, 18 years old and no woman.” Rob jabbed an “18” into the air for emphasis. He continued. “We’re taking him to the city tonight…gonna get him a woman…old Tim’s never…”


As the only woman in the room and assuredly the person he was most embarrassed to be hearing this recital, I broke in. “The weather should be nice tonight for walking around in the city. Are you going into the village?” They were merciless. “Maybe Tim will have better luck in New York, he keeps striking out in Pennsylvania.” Rob shot back.


Because I was old enough to be his mother…but wasn’t…I could see that “old Tim” possessed the on-the-brink good looks that in a few short years would have his taunting friends vying for his young lady overflow.


He acknowledged their ribbing with downcast eyes and gave a swift apologetic glance in my direction with his long lashed, very deep blues. A tiny smile pulled at his sweetly sensuous mouth. Because I was old enough to be his mother… but wasn’t… I noticed that too.


The other guys pushed on with the attempted humiliation while Mike and I ignored them and talked around it all. A few minutes went by with Tim continuing to be un-responsive to their taunts. I glanced at my seat mate and suddenly noticed that while his head remained down, his eyes were aimed in my direction and fixed on my crossed legs, watching me unconsciously dangling one black high heeled shoe from my toes. He would glance away quickly checking to see if I had noticed, and then again allow his eyes to run down the black stockings, pause at the swaying heel, and slowly back up my leg.


To my knowledge, I hadn’t had my legs checked out by a man his age in quite some time. Because I was old enough to be his mother… but wasn’t…I un-crossed my legs slowly, inviting his full attention. Lazily I stretched each one straight out, a- la- Mrs. Robinson, before crossing back over. I continued to dangle the high heeled shoe, grateful that my stockings had survived the day without a run, and thankful that the gams are the last to go. His appreciation was palpable and made my own heart light with sweet recollections of men and lovers who were young long ago.


There, before his unsuspecting pals filled with their own bravado, Tim and I shared our little secret, neither of us letting on what we both knew. A few moments when the teasing of his peers was drowned out in his own unexpected stop along the way. I knew this sweet young man would soon realize with delicious surprise that he more then had what it took. I willed him the understanding that, used passionately and lovingly, it would make him a very happy man indeed and that most good things come at just the right time.


I smile when I remember that afternoon and my performance for an unacknowledged audience of one. My gift to a young man from a woman who was old enough to be his mother… but wasn’t.