The Girl Across the Street

The Girl Across the Street

I was 13 years old. I heard a knock at the door or our house in Port Jefferson, New York. It was my mother’s brother. One look at him and I knew it was bad news. He asked for my mom. She came to the door and he said “Daddy’s dead.”

She clawed his face with her nails. “This is bad.” I thought, and my childhood was over.

My parents met when they were 16.

My dad saw her crying on their street and the combination of her beauty and vulnerability was impossible to resist.

They have been married for 65 years and have known each other for 70. In the age of “Grey Divorce”, loyalty like that is a shining artifact of the past.

My mom grew up in Brookyln, and moved to Syosset, Long Island when she was 15. They were part of the mass exodus from the cities to the suburbs of the 1950s.

As a very small child, I thought that everyone's grandparents lived across the street from one another (Its convenient for Holiday visiting)

The woman in the picture is my great-grandmother from Sicily. She never quite learned English. She would ask if we wanted some Otta-Choke. We thought she meant “Artichoke” but she was saying Hot Chocolate in her thick, broken English.

We called her Little Grandma for obvious reasons.

Her diminutive stature and name belied her strength, however. She buried nine children and wore black most of her life. Until the day of my mother’s wedding. The stories are horrific. One child fell off the fire escape and was impaled on the iron fence below. These tales of woe haunted me as a child and still do.

My mom is a Brooklyn girl at heart. She grew up surrounded by people and love and the powerful life force that Brooklyn exudes.

She worshipped her father and when he passed it almost destroyed her. It was like a bomb went off inside her and the wreckage extended even beyond her own body and mind. I know now that she was in the dark throes of complicated grief for ten years. In the weeks and months after her dad’s death, my sisters and I would wake many mornings to her screams. My dad was away on extended business trips and I was “The man of the house” My mom would scream that she was paralyzed or blind. I did not know what hysterical paralysis or blindness were, but I knew she was ok. My sisters were crying and I would yell to be heard over the screaming, “Your’e not blind!…Open your eyes.” Or “You can walk~!” Stand up.” And I would help her out of bed and she would walk.

Episodes of darkness and despair continued for ten years until they sort of just faded away. She had finally burned the last embers of grief out of her body.

I have never seen anyone grieve as deeply or more profoundly in my life. I have inherited this trait from my mother. We cant help it.

Her dad grew up in little Italy and used to regale me with stories of “hopping the El train” up to Yankee Stadium and then sneaking in to see Babe Ruth play ball.

He was a wonderful raconteur, but would sometimes stop himself mid-story and say “I’ll tell you that one when you are a little older” I will never know what magic he spared my young ears.

My mom also loves to tell the stories of her life in her own uniquely charming way. She has a folksy wisdom that can be very endearing.

She reveals the innocence you see in this photo at times. Its a miracle that she has been able to maintain any of it after eight decades of this life. But her innocence is tempered by a Brooklyn toughness and a lifetime of deep love and even deeper longing. Part of her is in me and even though sometimes in my life I have not embraced that fact,

I know now that it's a good part.