Summers with Seven

Summers that end in Seven always signify new beginnings to me–67, well I won’t talk about that here. 77, Summer of Sam, summer of six weeks in Europe, come to home to a six week temp job that began in October and ended…10 years later October, 87, interviewed for new jobs. Shearson Lehman opened a job for me on Black Tuesday, October, of course. 97–circled many coop ads, 20something on my birthday. Seven brokers got back to me.

“Please if there is a god, let this be the apartment,” I remember thinking as I entered my building’s lobby. The apartment was even better. Closed on 10/1, coincidentally the first night of the Jewish New Year. Would take a sleeping bag and sleep in the closet until I actually moved in two months later.

Summers with Seven make me feel anticipation. Seven should be my lucky number. It’s not.

Summers with Seven have a definite edge. They live on way past the end.

Summers with Seven have a sweet forlorn beauty. They make me yearn for somethings new, as I hang onto the wonder of the present.

People get New York in the summer of 77 all wrong. It was the cusp of new beginnings. So was I. Made myself remember the events and the nuances. I began looking back to it before it ever ended. Geneva was a different world than New York. Geneva made me into a girl who could throw the best parties. They had them there.

77 will always be a watershed wonderful summer for those of us not affected by the affects of the black out. Yes there was Sam but really what were the odds? We did live in quasi fear probably brought on by our parents who most likely wished they could order us somewhere else.

Mine paid for a six week trip. True I stayed with friends, and a few bed & breakfast type places, but air fare was much more. As I was working for my parents I could take the time.

Spike Lee got 77 right. The only one to do so. It wasn’t my New York then. Mine was the New York of privilege. It embarrassed me, an emotion I know people today can’t relate to.

In the fall I was to take a job where for the first time since I was a kid I was going to come into en masse contact with children of the boroughs. Somehow I felt a part of me had come home.

I have always wondered if that was a deficit. If I was hiding from my identity. Scared of potential, I didn’t want to know I had. Or if I was searching for other worlds in the city of my birth.

real real gone…
I can’t stand up by myself
Some people say you can
make it on your own
You can make it if you try
I know better now
•••••••••••••
in the youth of a thousand summers
like a sweet bird of youth
in my soul
••••••••••••••••••••••••
memories of summer days
so long ago, people and places
that we used to go
oh, those memories
all I have now is memories

Van Morrison should be winter. But he’s all seasons. In the summer of 77 I went to Max’s,
CBGB’s, Upper East Side fern bars otherwise known as restaurants where you drank too much, picked up strangers and sometimes took them home. Sometimes you got to see cable in the morning. Reuter’s news flashing, ‘NEW playing in the background. All these years and I never realized what the call letters meant. Began in the summer of 67 I believe. All album sides.

Summers with Seven always bring something wonderful. I’m a sucker for summers with Seven. The unimaginable becomes reality. This damn well better stick to the pattern. I believe in the power of a summer with a Seven.