Shelia's place

     I was supposed to stay with Susan during my 70th birthday trip to New York. Well, I'd planned to stay in a hotel, but Susan wanted me to stay with her. That was really much better, a good idea even though my plan had been to see how tough I was and whether I could do it all myself. The last time I'd been to NY was with my big guy, three or four summers ago, before that relationship ended.

     New York was my city, for eighteen years. I still consider myself a New Yorker, not having ever forgiven Boston for the disgusting display of racism during bussing when I first moved here in 1974. But New York has changed and so have I. And it was a bit daunting to make this trip. 

     I travel very little since my body is so cranky from fibromyalgia. If I sit too long, it gets angry. And if I carry heavy things, it gets angry. If I work at the computer, it gets angry. It absolutely hates the bus and loathed PeterPan all the way down, no leg room and uncomfortable seats. And I'd had a hard week, helping out a friend whose mother is very ill, going back and forth to deal with the cyst and taking antibiotics that produced stomach angst. So, I wasn't in the best of shape. 

     Because Susan wasn't able to have me at her condo, she asked her friend, Shelia, if I could stay there. Shelia (how do you spell her name?) makes friends just walking up the block, gives away many keys to her apartment and was willing to try me out. Susan bought a blow-up mattress and took me there on Friday night after I got off of the bus. 

     Shelia is easy. And nothing could have been better, barring the fact that I couldn't stay with Susan. 

     Lady, Shelia's golden retriever who seems more like a large refrigerator that moves from place to place, placidly, quietly, was rescued from a friend whose mother, in Mexico, died. Lady understood only Spanish, had never been on a leash, and lived in extreme luxury. Shelia's friend had found good homes for the servants, but couldn't find anyone to take the dog. When Shelia said that she was finished mourning for Chico, their former beloved dog, part Chow, part Pit Bull and something else that seems equally fierce, her friend flew to Mexico and brought an extremely frightened Lady back to New York. 

     Lucky Lady. Adored Lady. After having tried giving her the food that she was used to, and trying many other brands, Shelia now boils chicken for her, adds green beans to a bit of kibble and stirs it all up. 

      I don't know how Sly got adopted, but he follows her around as if he's a dog. It took him a couple of days before he'd allow me to photograph him, but on the last day, after I'd moved to a hotel, he allowed me to capture a few images. I'd stopped by her house on the way to the bus station, dragging my suitcase. I'd forgotten the bones that I wanted to take back to Boston so that I could make pinhole images of them. Why I got this hair brain idea is beyond me. But the bones, that Shelia had put on the shelf when Lady finished with them, were fascinating. Perhaps they remind me of "50 lbs. of clay," an installation piece. I'd never been at all interested in making anything that's beautiful, but for the last four years, I've been working with clay, amassing these impractical installations that I won't ever find a place to show. Anyway, I saw the bones. Photographing them with the digital point-and-shoot wasn't enough. They have to be pinhole images, I thought. Insanity.

     Shelia said, "Don't take them all. Your suitcase will be too heavy to pull." I obeyed, though I wanted them all. The suitcase was very heavy to pull. But now I want her to send me a monthly supply of bones by mail. I'll send her postage money. I hope I make the pinhole photos. 

     And Shelia allowed herself to be part of my 2008-2009 self-portrait series. That was terrific, more terrific because Lady wanted to join us.

4 East 15th Street, New York, New York

      I was in New York and staying with a friend of Susan's who told me to go left when I left her front gate and then walk across to the Farmer's Market. Since I was strangely disoriented, very strangely, I needed instructions on how to get anywhere and I did just what she said. As I was walking across 15th St., I passed a barricade of suitcases and carts and glanced at it. A man with a ruddy face was sleeping there. He looked like a farmer, large and capable, covered by a blue blanket. 

     Much later in the afternoon, I walked by again and noticed that he'd awakened, made a blanket hood to hide his face and had a pack of cigarettes lying next to him. The smell of urine was pervasive.

     That was Saturday. 

     The next day it threatened rain and I wondered how he would manage to protect his mattresses and belongings, wondered whether he was going to lie in bed until the rain began. But when as I crossed Fifth Avenue, I could see that his belongings had been consolidated, that the mattresses were folded and the carts pushed against the elevator structure that had served as his headboard. There's no telling where he had gone.

      His address had been 4 East 15th Street, but on Monday his make-shift home was gone. The only trace of it was a cigarette pack, the same brand that I'd noticed on his blanket, tucked into a corner of the window ledge. And the large gray push card was still there, almost cleaned out. 

      I think he'd had two mattresses, one buttressed against the building, the other tucked against his partitioning. But they were gone, his broom was gone, all the suitcases had vanished. The area was swept clean. I couldn't help myself. I had to look into the bin to see if there was any evidence of his presence left.

     When I lived in New York, there were derelicts on the Bowery, and men wandering in and out of the Dorothy Day house for homeless men near where the Hell's Angels lived on Second Street near Second Avenue. But there was nothing, nothing, like the level of homelessness there is now. If it was ordinary to see men sleeping in doorways near that loft where my daughter, her father and I lived right after she was born, it wasn't ordinary to see them sleeping near Fifth Avenue in a neighborhood that was considerably better.

     I understand some of the issues of homelessness in Boston, having worked some in the women's section of a shelter. Once the state mental institutions were closed and patients had been released, supposedly, to residential living and, after the many rooming houses had been sold for private residences, there was an exponential increase in the number of people who were homeless and in shelters or living on the streets.  

     I can't know whether the man who'd made a bedroom so resourcefully has a social worker who has helped him get some services. I have no way of knowing whether he's one of the many who refuse medication because they hate the side-effects or are afraid of going to doctors and afraid of sleeping in shelters which seem far more dangerous to them than being on the streets. And I don't know who was paid to toss out all his belongings and sweep away his traces.

           

     I was staying on 15th Street with a friend of Susan's who told me to turn left and walk across to on Square to the farmer's market on Saturday. Since I was strangely disoriented and didn't know uptown from downtown, I followed her directions. Just as I crossed 5th Avenue, I walked by a barrier of suitcases and carts and noticed the ruddy face of a sleeping man. He could have been a farmer, lying there, covered by a blue blanket, on top of a mattress. I could see him through a crack between his partitioning.

     When I walked by much later, probably about two, his head was covered with a blanket hood, his face hidden, a pack of cigarettes lying next to him. I could smell urine from several feet away.

     The next day it was threatening rain and I wondered how he would manage that. It seemed probable that he had two mattresses, one buttressed against the building and the other against the carts and his suitcases. How would everything stay dry?

     But when I walked by his area, 4 East 15th Street, the mattresses had been folded up and the carts pushed against the outside elevator shaft that had served as the head of his bed. He was gone.

Tipping at Starbucks

     Since the economy seriously crashed, I've been using my Target credit card at Starbucks. Usually I buy the Times and I always buy a tall, non-fat, extra-hot latte. Before December, I just bought the latte, used cash and always tipped, though I always tried to preserve the valuable quarters for parking meters.

     This latte is a serious indulgence and I think about it all the time, about the amount of money I could save by not buying it. I used to watch pennies, refusing to buy paper towels or avocados. That was in the olden New York days before we knew that using paper towels might cause more ecological damage than washing dish towels does. Now, since I'm living on a pension and have lost such a large portion of my hard-won savings, I'm watching them again. 

    But not tipping at Starbucks? That's crazy. Why would I not automatically continue to do that?  

     But I've noticed that the tip box isn't as full as it used to be even though those behind the counter are just as helpful and cheerful as they always are. And I've read that people are tipping less generously.  

    A recent NPR broadcast encouraged increased tipping because so many women have become the only wage earner in their families. The gist was that when you go out to eat on Mother's Day, remember that this may be the second job  your waitress has and tip well.

     Several months ago, I began tipping again. Still using the credit card. And now wondering whether it's better to let the person at the cash register notice  that I'm putting change in the clear plastic box, that I care.

     

The Conversation

     Two days ago, I had a brief conversation with a virtual stranger that I've thought a lot about. He hadn't married until he was forty-eight, he told me. He wasn't ready before, not mature enough. But finally he decided that he wanted to take on a committed relationship, not just short term good-times. And he'd found the woman he could do that with.

     I've been thinking a lot about this readiness to accept what I'll term adultness, for want of a better word, since that's a state that I've resisted almost all of my life. I can pinpoint some of the difficulties starting with my mother's death and my father selling the house and disposing of all her carefully chosen furnishings a year later. That put paid to my idea of home as a safe environment, a place that would protect you.

     And the upheaval of my teenager years with a drinking father in an era during which women weren't particularly encouraged to take on professions undoubtedly lead to my acting out a collision course downward. All this made me resistant to taking on the wrappings (I would have thought of them as trappings) of adulthood -- a healthy relationship and a home. 

     I'm seventy now, able to look at the past and see the times when I made sorry choices  because I was incapable of making better ones. What I found touching about the discussion with this virtual stranger is that he was able to stop himself from repeating a pattern that wasn't going to lead to the privilege of a healthy relationship and all that means -- the pleasure and the work of it.

     My set of circumstances made it impossible for me to come to such a conclusion in time. There was something about my family history that was damaging to me, just as it was damaging to my half brother, sixteen years older than I am, who has made even less progress in leading a stable life. At least I've had the benefit of working with seven therapists and a great deal of Alanon, but it's still been a struggle.

      What I particularly appreciated about my conversation the other day was that this fellow is somewhere in his mid-fifties and capable of talking about his choices in the way that no man I've met in his sixties or early seventies does. He was speaking simply and openly, exposing vulnerability as well as maturity. And he's in a profession that is associated with power and authority. I hope that this was a sign that men of a younger generation are more capable of the kind of conversations that I've only had with women. 

     This was in the olden days, before transatlantic flights. We went by boat to Rotterdam.

Rigoletto and Aida

     On Sunday, I went to see Rigoletto at the Coolidge Corner with all the other old folks, many of whom were Russian. It was even better than Don Carlo had been because Leo Nucci, singing and acting the role of Rigoletto, has an unimaginably expressive face. It was such a pleasure to watch him, something only possible  through these filmed versions. 

     I've only been to two operas, both of which were entangled with other emotions that going to the movies on a Sunday morning doesn't have. The first was Aida in the Baths of Caracalla when I was nineteen, my first and only trip to Europe. 

      I had been sitting in the tiny living room-kitchen in Danny's miniscule apartment in Little Italy when his father phoned. At some point during their conversation, Danny put his hand over the phone and asked, "Do you want to go to Italy?" And I said, "No." But he had the tickets for our passage within a week. 

     When Danny was a boy in Rome, before the war, his father had left to start a factory making guitar strings in New York. Perhaps Danny was nine or ten. He told me little about his childhood except that his mother's father had been a prominent doctor with a practice in Rome, but given to spendthrift gestures such as regularly treating villagers for free in his hometown in the Abruzzi mountains. He was so close to financial ruin that his daughter was obliged to marry this manufacturer, a man hardly matching her intelligence or status,  in order to keep her father afloat.

      I know that Danny slept in his mother's bed for a long while after his father left and became a member of a fascist youth, a brown shirt marching with his friends, that his parents had had a bitter relationship and hadn't seen each other since his father left Italy. 

     Danny had eventually followed his father to New York, in part to study. I imagine that he was shocked to learn that his father was planning to visit her. Clearly he was unable to allow this to happen without his presence. And he didn't want to go alone. 

     I had chosen this unlikely man out of not entirely conscious necessity, someone to rescue me from living in my father's apartment on Charles Street in Greenwich Village. I'd been too sick with ulcerative colitis to start Bard College that fall, so I'd had to move with him, spoiling my father's escape from the suburbs, from ever, as he put it, mowing a lawn again. 

     The apartment he had chosen for himself was on the top floor, one huge studio with many windows, a skylight and a tiny bathroom. He'd been forced to build partitions to close off my single bed, but they were his height and made of woven furniture webbing. The only door in that place was to the bathroom where he often slept in the tub at night. He was continuing to drink at the same rate as he had all through my years of high school so Danny, someone who worked with investments and was twelve years older than I was, seemed like a better evil.

     By the time I got to see Aida, we'd been to Brussels for the World's Fair, had a brief glimpse of Amsterdam and taken the train to Rome where I was, evidentially, the object of much worry. Only later did I learn that his father had paced those marble floors all night, making sure that Danny wasn't ever in the bedroom where I was sleeping, his mother's dark, formal room with the high canopied bed. I can only imagine what his parents felt about this American girl, a choice they must have considered hardly appropriate for their son.

     At the same time that my presence was causing consternation, a spinster cousin from New York was visiting, a trip planned around finding her a husband. We often went as a group to a cafe in order to meet some fellow that the marriage brokers considered a plausible match. The one that I favored seemed like a good candidate and we all saw him several times. They were even permitted to walk alone, talking, and it all seemed so promising until someone discovered that he'd been institutionalized briefly and he was dismissed.

     Though I had learned a little Italian and understood some of what was being said, I was too aware that my presence was unwelcome. My happiest times were in the morning when I went into the tiny kitchen where Gemma, the tiny old woman who had been with the family for years, gave me a glass of yogurt that she had made. And she smiled at me.